

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

























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Paul Bailed Desperately 


Page 70 




SQUAW POINT 


BY 

ARLAND D. WEEKS 

»* 

Author of “Play Days on Plum Blossom Creek,” etc. 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 




Copyright, 1919 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


•* « v 


m -7 1919 


OH* ©utmt & Sotien Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 


©CI.A535606 


\ 


<r V\ c 


TO 

FLORENCE 













CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAQE 


I 

The Parker Boy 

1 

II 

At the Hermit’s 

. 20 

III 

Riches . .... 

. 39 

IV 

Picks and Pikes 

. 59 

V 

Dynamite and Gunpowder 

. 80 

VI 

Through the Woods 

102 

vn 

The Boys in the Cottage 

. 122 

vm 

Ben Gives Swimming Lessons 

. 143 

IX 

A Picnic Supper 

. 162 

X 

The Man of the House . 

. 182 

XI 

The Coons 

. 205 

XII 

Partridges . . . . 

. 224 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


Paul Bailed Desperately [p. 70] Frontispiece 

PAQB 

“Now Turn Around and Walk Back,” 
Shouted Ben 37 

Bill Took off His Hat and Put the 
Snake in It 125 ^ 

“I Heard a Shot” ..... 221 



SQUAW POINT 


i 

THE PARKER BOY 

Ben Long had lived near Squaw Point all his 
young life and it had never occurred to him 
that any one would think of coming there to 
spend a vacation. If he ever should have the 
good luck to have a vacation he knew where he 
would spend it. He would go to the city, to 
Duluth or Minneapolis. So Ben was surprised 
to see lumber being unloaded in the woods near 
Squaw Point and to learn that a family was 
coming to spend the summer in a new cottage. 

Ben herded the cows up and down the road 
and saw bricks left for the chimney, and the 
pile of stones, brought from the lake shore, for 
a foundation. And then one day about four 
o’clock in the afternoon there were chopping 
and pounding, and up went a tent where the 


l 


2 SQUAW POINT 

building crew of three men were to sleep and 
eat during the few days required to erect a 
cottage. 

Every day Ben stopped to see the cottage. 
While the workmen were there he watched 
them. He thought he might want to be a car- 
penter himself sometime, and he could not see 
why he could not become a carpenter if he had 
a kit of tools. As it was he could make things 
out of wood, even with the few tools to be found 
in Uncle Erickson’s dilapidated shed. The 
workmen came to expect Ben to appear and a 
day would not have been complete without the 
figure of the boy in his rolled-up overalls, with 
built-on suspenders of the same material, his 
tent-like felt hat, and his hardened, thorn-proof 
legs and bare feet, with square-ended great toes 
of heroic proportions. Ben’s hands bore scars 
from manipulating rusty barbed wire in sus- 
pending a trick pole between two poplars and 
getting pricked by back fins when scaling pike. 

One morning at breakfast Uncle Erickson, 
who shaved once a week, said that he under- 


THE PARKER BOY 3 

stood that the Parkers, the cottage family, were 
coming right away. An auto truck had brought 
down a kerosene burner. 

“Is he coming too!” asked Mrs. Erickson. 

“Don’t know for sure,” replied Uncle Erick- 
son. “He will most likely run down in his auto 
for Sundays. They say he is a traveling man 
with lots of money, two hundred a month cold 
cash.” 

“Come easy, go easy,” was Mrs. Erickson’s 
comment. 

“Come hard, and go easy, it is with me,” 
lamented Uncle Erickson, who was always en- 
thusiastic in summer about cutting ice and keen 
in winter for making hay and draining swamps. 

Ben listened. He had learned something. 
Traveling men make lots of money. Two hun- 
dred a month. That was wealth. How could 
a boy become a traveling man! He would 
watch the Parkers and catch on if he could. 
Ben had made up his mind that he was going 
to become rich if it was possible. He had been 


4 SQUAW POINT 

poor, was poor, and he would look for a way 
out. He had thought that a million dollars 
would be about the right sum to have, or two 
hundred a month, which would amount to about 
the same thing. He was glad the Parkers were 
coming. Parties had come down to Squaw 
Point to shoot ducks in the fall and catch fish 
on Decoration Day, but the Parkers were the 
first family to come down to live and camp and 
be around where a hoy could learn every- 
thing. 

Ben swallowed a full capacity swallow of 
wheat substitutes, cleared his throat, waited 
for an opening in the conversation, and asked, 
with an attempt at maturity, “Do the Parkers 
have a family f” 

Uncle Erickson did not know “for sure. ,, 

Mrs. Erickson supposed they must have. 

“There is too much floor space for just two 
people,” observed Ben hopefully. 

“That cottage does not look so big,” said 
Uncle Erickson. 

“Twenty-eight by thirty-two,” said Ben. 


THE PARKER BOY 


5 


“Where did you get your figures V 9 asked 
Uncle. 

“Paced -it,” said Ben. 

“That’s big enough,” said Uncle. 

“Maybe she’s one of the kind that lives all 
over a house and has to have lots of room,” 
ventured Mrs. Erickson. 

“They shipped down a baby’s crib,” said 
Ben. 

“Then they must have a baby,” remarked 
Mrs. Erickson. 

“ And there was a short cot too,” said Ben. 

“All sorts and sizes,” said Uncle. “Of 
course there is a family. A traveling man 
would not come down here and buy a frontage 
and put up a cottage if he did not have a 
family.” 

Ben was pleased to believe that there was a 
boy, to judge by the looks of things, and that 
he must be about Ben’s own age. There was 
nothing by which to tell w T hetlier Ben would 
be able to lick him if trouble should arise. He 
hoped that there would not be any trouble. 


6 SQUAW POINT 

Ben pictured himself and the now real 
Parker boy in all sorts of deals. He im- 
agined himself and the Parker boy out in a 
boat together fishing. The Parker boy would 
get a bite and then Ben would get two. The 
Parker boy would pull in and have a two -pound 
* 1 pick,” which was Ben’s name for pickerel. 
Then Ben would pull in and have a four-pound 
pick. Or the Parker hoy would catch just pick 
all the forenoon and Ben would pull in nothing 
but pike, which everybody knows is better eat- 
ing. They would go for bait. Ben would come 
back with a pail full of minnows and another 
pail of frogs. The Parker boy would still be 
looking for bait. Ben would know just where 
to row the boat to put it over good fishing, 
while the Parker boy would go here and there 
and not know the depth. Ben pictured himself 
always catching at least one more fish and 
swimming at least a foot farther and hitting 
the bulls-eye with the rifle right in the middle 
while the Parker boy’s shots always went at 
least a quarter of an inch wrong. Maybe the 


THE PARKER BOY 7 

Parker boy could run as fast, but be could not 
rip right through prickly ash bushes with bare 
legs any better. Ben “nosed out” by a slight, 
if never so slight, advantage in all the imagi- 
nary competitions with the Parker boy who had 
not yet arrived at Squaw Point. 

But he came. Ben had not guessed so far 
wrong after all; in fact he denied that he had 
guessed at all. Uncle Erickson said Ben had 
guessed right. Ben said he had not guessed, 
he knew. “All right,” said Uncle, “but that is 
what I call guessing.” 

The Parker boy was more surprised than 
Ben when they met the first time. Ben had 
been doing business in his mind with the 
Parker boy long before the occupants of the 
new cottage arrived, but the Parker boy looked 
surprised when he met Ben in the road. Ben 
was just as usual, suspenders built on, old felt 
hat, barefooted, scarred and curious. He 
looked a welcome toward the strange boy, a 
silent one, to be sure. The Parker boy looked 
pained and embarrassed. He was fatter than 


8 SQUAW POINT 

Ben and had on shoes and black stockings and 
an ironed waist or shirt, such as are displayed 
in the front windows of a department store in 
a county seat. He did not look as limber as 
Ben felt and his skin was whitish and his 
cheeks seemed stiff and plump. He told Ben 
his name was Paul Parker. Ben did not take 
much of a “ shine’ ’ to him, but Paul’s hair was 
stiff as millet and grew down on his forehead 
and this made Ben feel better. 

Paul had a pail and said his mother had asked 
him to go to a neighbor’s and see if he could 
get a dozen eggs. Ben said come on, as they 
had eggs at their house. 

“So you keep a hen — hens — at your house?” 
asked Paul. 

Ben decided Paul was rattled and that the 
best way to do would be to keep him under 
observation for a while to see what kind of boy 
he was. It was clear that Paul was not w T hat 
Ben had expected, and Ben’s fear of the 
Parker boy was instantly replaced by a feeling 
that everybody is human after all. 


THE PARKER BOY 


9 


“ Going to live at Squaw Point ?” asked 
Ben. 

“All summer/’ said Paul. “Mother needs 
a rest and I have been sick with the measles.” 

“I’ve had ’em,” said Ben, “and all the chil- 
dren’s diseases, I guess. Broke my arm two 
years ago. Fell out of the old oak tree. I was 
fixing a swing rope. I was on a ladder and 
tried to jump the ladder along on the limb. 
She slipped and I made a hole in the ground.” 

“Are there any Indians around here?” in- 
quired Paul, who was beginning to sweat in his 
efforts to keep up with Ben over the corduroy 
road. Paul had not been very strong, his 
mother thought, and his father had been away 
from home a good deal, which left the family 
under cautious feminine influence, and all of 
Paul’s teachers had been women. When Paul 
first heard of Squaw Point he was concerned 
lest there be Indians there, yet he wanted to 
go somewhere. He had lived in town, first in 
a big city and then in a smaller city, ever since 
he could remember. 


10 SQUAW POINT 

“Indians?” repeated Ben. “There are no 
regular Indians around here. Oh, once in a 
while they come back. This used to be a res- 
ervation. They come down summers some- 
times. They camp on the lake and hang around 
for a while and then they are gone again. They 
have bony old horses and a lot of dogs and 
there are squaws and babies. Sometimes the 
men get drunk and raise Cain.” 

“Suppose they came around — the men — and 
made trouble? Our cottage is in a lonesome 
place,” said Paul, his face slowly registering 
an understanding of a possible encounter with 
Indians. 

“What would you do?” snorted Ben. “I 
don’t know what you would do, but if it was 
me I would kick ’em good and hard in the coat 
tails and tell ’em to hit the trail for where they 
ought to be.” 

“Oh,” said Paul, with big eyes. 

“Say, that cottage of yours is in a lonesome 
place,” said Ben, “a kind of a lonesome place. 
You the only man?” 


THE PARKER BOY 


11 


* ‘ Father will be here between trips and two 
or three weeks at one time, and Aunt Dorothy 
is going to be here all the time. She is twenty- 
two and is Mother’s youngest sister. And 
that’s all, except us children. I’m the oldest.” 

“Gee,” said Ben. “You’ve got a job cut 
out for yourself, to fight those Indians and 
round up the wolves and bobcats and bears and 
porcupines and skunks and panthers and lions 
and hyenas that will be up to see you.” 

Paul was silent, but he kept the road. He 
clutched the bail of the egg pail lest the pail 
fall ; he feared that he might collapse. 

Ben felt he had taken a mean advantage of 
Paul. There were wolves and bobcats and In- 
dans but not just the way Paul thought. 

“Up there is Squaw Point,” said Ben, try- 
ing to introduce a cheerful note. 

Paul swallowed a lump and secured enough 
moisture in his throat to speak. 

“What’s up there?” he asked. 

Ben laughed. 

“Nothing’s up there,” said Ben. “Nothing 


12 SQUAW POINT 

that would hurt you. The Hermit lives up 
there, but he’s a good one. We’ll go up there 
and see him some night. He has a telescope, 
and his wife died or something, and he lives 
up there. He owns the berry patch and a whole 
lot of shore.” 

“ Would you go to see him at night!” asked 
Paul. 

“Sure,” said Ben. “That’s the right time 
for him. He will let you look through his 
telescope and tell you about the stars. Do you 
know the earth is just nothing, the stars are 
so enormous!” 

“I learned about stars and planets in 
school,” remarked Paul. “I am in the eighth 
grade.” 

“That’s pretty well up,” observed Ben. 

“There is high school coming after that 
too,” said Paul. 

“You going to that! ” asked Ben. 

“Yes,” said Paul. 

Ben did not say anything for a long while. 
Then he expressed the opinion that if one tried 


THE PARKER BOY 13 

he could possibly learn a good deal in school. 

“ Everybody around here,” resumed Ben, 
“ knows Squaw Point. Some folks come think- 
ing it’s a town or something. It’s just that 
big hill or mountain that rises up there and 
runs out into the lake. You can see it from 
any place on the lake. There is a road now 
and an auto can get in if the driver knows how. 
All woods and trees and gooseberry bushes. 
You can see everywhere when you are up on 
top. There are tall trees over on the other side 
that don’t begin to reach up to the top of 
Squaw Point. When the wind blows you would 
never know it if you are on one side of the 
Point and the wind is on the other. The deep- 
est place in the whole lake is oft the end of 
the Point, no bottom.” 

“ There must be some bottom,” thought 
Paul. 

“If there is, nobody has ever found it,” said 
Ben. 

“There’s lots of more things around here 
too,” said Ben. “There are the Indian graves. 


14 SQUAW POINT 

They are just beyond your cottage. They used 
to bury dead Indians there by the thousand. 
They buried a big chief there once. I have 
heard Old Man Westby tell about it, but Uncle 
says he is such a liar. There are only two or 
three graves that you can find now, but the 
ground is full of bones. They plow them out 
and when they run the road machines they dig 
out more. But you mustn’t handle the Indian 
bones rough.” 

“Why not?” asked Paul. 

“It wouldn’t do,” said Ben. “Those bones 
have relatives, and suppose some live Indian 
should come out of the bushes and say, ‘That’s 
my cousin you are kicking around.’ How would 
you feel? Like thirty cents, I guess.” 

Paul thought it would be better to keep away 
from the bones altogether. 

“They say,” said Ben, “that it’s not right 
to walk on a grave. Do you know?” 

Paul did not. 

“It’s called Squaw Point,” said Ben, “be- 
cause the squaws used to go there to pick ber- 


THE PARKER BOY 15 

ries. They dried them. There are all kinds 
of berries on the slopes; gooseberries till you 
can’t rest, and raspberries. Some black rasp- 
berries, but mostly red ones. They fall oft the 
bushes. There is an open place where maybe 
the Indians raised corn, but they call it Squaw 
Point anyhow.” 

However Squaw Point may have received its 
name, and accounts often differ, it was a 
sightly formation. The northwest winds, pos- 
sibly for thousands and thousands of years, 
had come volleying upon the high face of the 
bluff which stood against them. The boulders 
at the base of the Point had been washed by 
waves that rose and fell long before Columbus 
discovered America. Big trees had grown 
from seeds on the top of Squaw Point and be- 
come old and had housed red squirrels and 
at last fallen from their own decay or been 
toppled over by winds of long ago, and then 
other seeds had grown into trees and these had 
grown old and in turn gone back to earth, and 
still more seeds and trees. Maybe a hundred 


16 SQUAW POINT 

thousand years ago squaws or some kind of 
people picked berries of some kind on what 
was then the Squaw Point that was going to 
weather and change and become the Squaw 
Point of now. 

Ben and Paul talked of how long ago things 
could have been such as they are now and de- 
cided that it must have been an empty-big time 
ago when the earth was first a good deal as it 
is now. They thought too that the time would 
come when we are as far back to people on 
the earth as the most forgotten Indians of long 
ago are to us right now. 

Paul got a dozen of eggs and went back to 
the cottage. His mother was getting dinner, 
and Aunt Dorothy was helping and laughing a 
good deal, as she always did; she laughed 
when other people would be provoked, Dorothy 
had a roundish face and gray eyes, and she was 
always straightening her face, so she could talk, 
after having been laughing at something. They 
had been talking about something special, 
Mother and Aunt Dorothy. A farmer had 


THE PARKER BOY 17 

driven to tlie beach right in front of the cot- 
tage and was shoveling sand into his wagon. 
Mother and Dorothy did not know what to do. 
Mother was sure that Mr. Parker would not 
allow any one to take away loads of sand from 
in front of the cottage, and Dorothy said that 
the sand hauler probably thought he was doing 
the cottagers a favor by removing it. To be 
sure, Mr. Parker had bought that frontage 
largely because of the smooth sandy beach, 
where the children could play safely, but it 
might not occur to a farmer that city people 
would have any use for sand. There he was, 
the sand man, shoveling great dripping shovel- 
fuls of their precious sand into his wagon, and 
the women hardly knew what to do. 

Paul saw the situation, and feeling the stir 
which comes from having escaped fearful im- 
aginary dangers, made up his mind that now 
was the time to act. He would deal with the 
sand man. It would be easier anyhow than 
grappling with Indians at midnight. This was 
a good time to begin training. He would see 


18 SQUAW POINT 

what he could do to move the sand man. He 

would not say a word to his mother either. 

Paul set down the eggs, and with a cheek that 
resembled in color the eggs themselves, for 
they were White Leghorn, started for the 
beach. If the sand man had shown that he 
expected to be sent off it would have been 
easier for Paul. Put if ever there was a man 
in a state of innocence it was the sand man. 
Paul saw every feature of the sand man and 
remembered for days afterward. There was 
the sand man’s cap; it was a white cap, with 
not a wrinkle of goods to spare and with an 
economical visor; on it was printed an appeal 
to use a certain brand of coffee. The sand man 
had a beard, sharp pointed, not like a kind 
farmer’s beard. The man was long and bony 
and might be angry if spoken to. 

Paul went quite near but not near enough to 
make the man hear what he said, which was, 
‘ 1 This sand belongs to us. ’ ’ The sand man took 
no notice whatever. Paul went nearer and said 
in a loud voice, “This sand belongs to us.” 


THE PARKER BOY 19 

The sand man stopped shoveling and looked. 

Paul braced himself and said, “We would 
like to have you get your sand somewhere 
else.” 

The man looked at Paul and Paul nearly 
fainted. 

“Oh, ya,” said the sand man and he picked up 
the reins and clucked to the horses and went 
farther along the beach. 

But the Parker boy felt a little more like 
the man the camp ought to have around for 
emergencies; and he felt a stronger desire to 
see Ben Long again. 


n 


AT THE HERMIT’S 

Ben had told Paul about the Hermit, who lived 
on the top of Squaw Point, and the boys went 
up one evening. The Hermit lived on the top 
of Squaw Point, but as the top of this geo- 
graphical formation was not all in one place, 
there was a good deal of top on which the 
Hermit did not live. His log cabin was among 
the trees and in a place from which the Her- 
mit could see the long sweep of the lake and 
view the heavens with his telescope, which last 
occupation was his delight. He had great dark 
eyes, with a baggy appearance beneath them, 
and his voice was soft and pleasing. He moved 
slowly and always seemed to be thinking out 
something, astronomy probably. 

The Hermit had once been a salesman for a 
big publishing house and had put up at the best 


20 


AT THE HERMIT’S 21 

hotels. He knew about Pullman cars and 
everything like that. How in the world a man 
of his ability should have come to live on 
Squaw Point was something that people never 
stopped talking about. They were glad to have 
him there, too. The Hermit seemed pleased to 
have people come to see him, and he would 
quote poetry to the boys. 

The evening Paul and Ben were at the Her- 
mit’s, Old Man Westby had dropped in and 
also Bill Olson. The three men sat on a bench 
outside the cabin and the boys leaned against 
trees when not seated on the ground. 

Old Man Westby did most of the talking. He 
told his well-known panther story. It was new 
to Paul. When Westby and his wife, so the 
story ran, first came to live near Squaw Point 
the woods were full of wild animals. You could 
set a wolf trap and have something in it the 
next morning. Chickens, turkeys and lambs 
were taken night after night. It was a good 
idea to have a rifle along when grubbing out 
stumps. You might get a good shot any time. 


22 SQUAW POINT 

The twilight was deepening and Paul moved 
closer to the bench. He was interested. 

One night, said Westby, he and his wife and 
their first baby were at a neighbor’s a mile 
away. The first thing they knew it was twelve 
o’clock and dark as a pocket, with only a faint 
light above the line of the tree tops and bluffs. 
There was no moon. The people where they 
were calling wanted the Westbys to stay all 
night. Old Man Westby was then a young man 
and was not afraid of the devil himself. But 
he did wish he had brought a gun along. He 
had his lantern. He shook his lantern to see 
how much oil there was in it, lighted it and 
said good-night and* started through the 
woods. 

Everybody listened as Westby went on with 
his story, even those who had heard it before. 
Paul knew that Westby had not been killed, for 
here he was, alive to tell the story. Old Man 
Westby sat back in his chair, now holding out 
his pipe in gnarly fingers, now gathering his 
audience to himself with a look of wrinkled 


AT THE HERMIT’S 23 

animation, and continued his story, sometimes 
pausing to straighten out a detail. The light 
was so dim that every word counted, only the 
darkish outline of Westby ’s head and the still 
darker aperture of his opened mouth showing 
with anything like distinctness. 

Well, Westby, wife and baby started home 
at midnight through the Minnesota woods, in 
the early days, before the game had been driven 
away by settlers. Westby went ahead with the 
lighted lantern, but the oil was low and he ex- 
pected the flame would flutter and go out any 
minute. Oil was dear in those days. A gallon 
cost nearly as much as a settler could get for 
a bushel of wheat. If the lantern should go 
out, there would be something — Westby speci- 
fied what — to pay, for a timber wolf or a lynx 
might smell the baby and get busy. Mrs. 
Westby followed behind, her husband carrying 
the baby as well as the lighted lantern. 

They got about halfway home when the baby 
began to cry. It would not hush up. Pretty 
soon there was an echo, at least they thought 


24 SQUAW POINT 

it was an echo. They heard the baby’s cry 
come back to them. But no, it could not be an 
echo. There was nothing for the baby’s cry 
to echo against, not at that point in the trail. 
They were going through a thick undergrowth 
of popple and willows on a sandy flat, too far 
from the bluffs to get an echo. Anyhow the 
sound was not just like an echo. Then Westby 
thought it might be another baby crying. But 
there was not a building nearer than their own. 
Then it dawned on Westby what it was. It 
was — a panther answering the baby! When 
Westby knew what the sound came from the 
hair stood straight up on his head and he could 
feel prickles all up and down his sides and 
back. 

“You weren’t afraid?” said the Hermit. 

“Wasn’t I?” replied Old Man Westby. 
“You bet I was. I nearly dropped dead. I 
was afraid my lantern would go out.” 

Westby resumed. A panther is the worst of 
them all. They have lots of nerve. But all 
wild animals are leery of a light and if the 


AT THE HERMIT’S 25 

lantern held out they would get home all right, 
probably. Westby asked his wife to keep close 
up behind and on they went. The baby cried 
and cried. Westby put his hand over her 
mouth, hut she yelled worse than ever, and the 
panther answered ! The panther must have 
thought the baby’s cry was that of another 
panther, for the panther’s cry is like that of a 
baby. They were a long way from home yet 
and the panther’s cry was coming nearer all 
the time. When the baby let up the panther 
would cry twice, as if he was afraid he might 
lose connections. And when the baby cried 
again the panther would move up a peg or two 
the next time it called. The lantern was still 
lighted and Westby counted on that to frighten 
the beast away if it should come closer. They 
were within a quarter of a mile of the house 
when there was a crashing in the bushes and an 
animal dashed across the trail just ahead of 
them. It was the panther. It had come to 
where the baby cried, and seeing the light had 
made off without attacking. 


26 SQUAW POINT 

“And the lantern stayed lighted,” said Bill 
Olson, after a long pause. 

“It went out the minute I set it down inside 
the door,” replied Westby, thankful for the 
question. 

“Oh, there’s animals about these parts yet,” 
said Bill Olson. “I’ve seen tracks of some wild 
beast in the mud on Duck Lake. It had a paw 
bigger than a man’s hand.” 

“Lynx,” said Old Man Westby. 

“There’s a pair of coyotes over in the big 
swamp,” said Bill. 

“But the game is pretty well run out now,” 
said Westby. “A few wolves and coyotes, and 
perhaps a bobcat now and then. A bobcat 
would not be so bad if he did not stay in trees 
ready to drop on you. ’ ’ 

“The man on the Dale farm saw bears in 
the road the other night,” said Bill. “Big as 
life, right in the road. Ran his auto right up 
to them. Two old bears and a cub.” 

“Yes,” said Westby, “the same bears that 
Henry Sears shot one of.” 


AT THE HERMIT’S 27 

“Did he shoot one?” asked Bill. 

“Shot a bear and killed a dog,” said Westby. 

“You don’t say,” said Bill, crushed. 

It was getting late and Ben and Paul started 
home. At first they were silent. Then Paul 
told Ben about the fraternities in the high 
school that he was going to attend in the fall. 
There were all sorts of stunts, he told Ben, 
funny things they made the boys do before 
they could be members. Ben had never heard 
of fraternities and thought they were not much 
good, but the talk gave him an idea. The idea 
was that of initiation. He would think that 
over. He might want to get up an initiation 
himself. 

As the boys went away from the Hermit’s 
the road under the trees seemed to become 
darker and darker. 

“Are you afraid?” asked Paul. 

“Not a bit,” said Ben. 

“But suppose an animal should come at 
us?” 

“That is not likely,” said Ben. “Most of 


28 SQUAW POINT 

the animals they talked about are dead. They 

are animals that used to be.” 

“But the others?” asked Paul. 

“Some of them are not animals,” said Ben. 
“They are like Bill Olson’s bears; they are 
dogs or cats or just mistakes.” 

“But the rest of them are real,” thought 
Paul. “Leave out the dead ones and the mis- 
takes and then there are enough left to make 
a person careful.” 

“Let me tell you something,” said Ben. 
“It’s not animals you are afraid of, but the 
pictures.” 

Paul was interested but not convinced. 

“It’s like this,” explained Ben. “You and 
I go up to the Hermit’s and Bill Olson and Old 
Man Westby talk animals. Then we think ani- 
mals. It used to scare me stiff, but I cured 
myself. ’ ’ 

“Tell me how,” besought Paul. “I am not 
afraid of animals, not especially, but I’d be 
glad to know how you keep from being scared. ’ ’ 

“It’s not animals that scare you, but pic- 


AT THE HERMIT’S 29 

tures,” resumed Ben. “Talk about animals 
and your mind makes pictures of them. Then 
you walk home at night and you see the pic- 
tures and get scared of them. There might not 
be an animal within forty miles and you might 
be scared stiff, all because you had pictures in 
your mind. ,, 

Paul felt relieved but not fully emancipated. 

“Suppose you put all the pictures out of 
your mind, you would not be scared,” said 
Paul. “Then suppose a real animal jumped 
down on your head, a bobcat.” 

“He might rip your ears off,” responded 
Ben, “but just the same you would not have 
been scared, not at first anyhow.” 

“But your ears would be gone,” argued 
Paul. 

“Oh, you might lose an ear now and then,” 
said Ben, “but that would be better than being 
scared all the time.” 

As the boys went along the dark road Paul 
saw things that looked strange enough to 
him. Then he would look somewhere else and 


30 SQUAW POINT 

for a moment forget what had startled him. 
He might forget entirely if he did not look 
twice. But if he did not look a second time he 
would feel prickly. He had so many pictures 
in his mind that trees and stumps and rocks, 
which probably Ben was passing without seeing 
resemblances, looked to Paul like a menagerie 
drawn up for review on both sides of a fearful 
avenue. 

“We have electric lights in town,” remarked 
Paul. 

“No need of them here,” replied Ben. 
“There’s the north star. You can go by that. 
The Hermit told me about that. Then if you 
know the road you can tell how far you have 
to go, from the feel of it.” 

The boys were nearing an old building by 
the road. Something moved and Paul clutched 
Ben’s arm. 

Ben whistled and a dog came alongside. 

“Try ’em first with a whistle,” said Ben. 
“If they aren’t dogs they are pigs or calves 
or cats or sheep or something else.” 


AT THE HERMIT’S 31 

Ben left Paul almost within hearing distance 
of the cottage and the latter lost no time in 
covering the intervening space. It was lone- 
some around Squaw Point after dark and it 
took city people a little while to become used 
to being in the dark and alone at that. After 
Paul had scampered off on the sandy road Ben 
thought what Paul needed was a good jacking 
up. He needs to get the scare out of him, 
thought Ben, who concluded that it was his 
duty to take hold of Paul and straighten him 
out, for he liked him, largely because he did 
not put on airs. Ben thought that if he could 
only get the scare out of Paul they would have 
a better time. “He’s a good little geezer,” 
said Ben to himself, “but he needs more spunk. 
He’s afraid of his shadow.” 

Ben and Paul met soon after and Ben spoke 
about hardening oneself. “Take your legs,” 
said Ben. “They are tender. Bun them 
through the bushes for a month and they are 
just like wire. Feet the same way. In the 
spring they feel everything. Go without shoes 


32 SQUAW POINT 

for a while and your feet sound like hoofs 
when you walk on a floor. Same with swim- 
ming. The first time you go into the water it 
feels like a chunk of ice. But when you ’ve been 
in a half a dozen times your skin seems to 
thicken up and you can stand a lot of cold 
water. ’ ’ 

4 ‘I’d like to harden up,” assented Paul. 

“You’re too scared of things,” said Ben. 

“I know it,” said Paul. “I want to harden 
up that way too. I don’t want to be a sissy.” 

“Maybe I can help you,” said Ben. “I am 
used to everything around here. But you must 
do as I say. That will be the best way.” 

“Do you think I better be hardened up out- 
side or inside first?” asked Paul. 

“I’ll work the two along together,” replied 
Ben. 

The boys were passing a pasture inclosed by 
a wire fence. Paul had usually peeled his eye 
as he passed that pasture, for he was afraid 
of bulls. If he had dreamed that the harden- 
ing process was due to begin at once and that 


AT THE HERMIT’S 33 

the pasture was to be the scene of the first les- 
son Paul would possibly not have contracted 
for lessons. We often pledge for reforms and 
severities, expecting that they will be deferred 
for a comfortable length of time. 

4 ‘ That bull’s a buster,” said Paul, pointing 
to the speckled monster within the wire fence. 

“ You ’re right he is,” said Ben. “He could 
run a horn through you so far you could hang 
your hat on the other side.” 

“Is he cross?” asked Paul. 

“No bull likes red,” replied Ben. 

“I’m glad there’s a wire fence around him,” 
said Paul with a great relief. 

“That fence won’t cb) you a bit of good,” 
said Ben, looking Paul in the eyes. 

“What do you mean?” asked Paul, fright- 
ened. 

“You are going through that pasture,” said 
Ben. 

“You’ll go with me,” gasped Paul. 

“Not on your life,” said Ben. “You are 
going through that pasture all by yourself. I’ll 


34 SQUAW POINT 

tell you what to do and you do it. In five 
minutes you are going into the pasture at this 
gate and you are going across to the other 
side, on a walk, see? If you run, the chances 
will he so much worse.’ ’ 

“Oh, Ben.” 

‘ 1 Oh nothing, are you ready ? ’ 9 

“The bull will kill me,” sobbed Paul, ter- 
rorized. 

“Do you think I’d let him kill you?” asked 
Ben. “You trust me. Are you ready?” 

Paul did not know what to do. He had made 
up his mind to take a course of Ben’s harden- 
ing, but this was too much. During Ben’s con- 
versation with Paul the great animal within the 
pasture seemed to stand ready to devour, 
trample and exterminate. It grazed and at 
times turned languidly with an air of colossal 
supremacy, seeming to keep an eye on the boys, 
as if to be in a position to charge should an 
intruder appear. Paul stood almost paralyzed 
between the moral force represented by Ben 
Long and the brute danger within the pasture. 


AT THE HERMIT’S 


35 


“Tell Mother,’ ’ said Paul, with dry lips, for 
he had made up his mind to do as Ben said. 
“If I should not get across, tell her about it.” 

“Oh, you’ll get across all right,” said Ben. 
“I’ve been across lots of times. But you bet- 
ter pick out a place in the fence on the other 
side for a quick get over.” 

“But there’s red in my tie,” said Paul, his 
face blanched. 

“That’s a fact,” acknowledged Ben. “I 
didn’t think about that. It’s lucky you thought 
about it. Bulls and red can’t live in the same 
field. Take it off.” 

Paul took off his tie. 

“Are you ready now!” asked Ben impa- 
tiently. 

Paul, sick, nodded. 

“No you aren’t, either,” said Ben. “The 
place you are looking at in the fence on the 
other side has rotten posts. You go to climb- 
ing up those posts and they would break off 
and the bull would come along and lift you the 
rest of the way.” 


36 SQUAW POINT 

“I didn’t know that,” gasped Paul. 

“How you going across?” asked Ben, by way 
of catechism. 

“Any way,” said Paul. “As fast as I can 
run. ’ ’ 

“Wrong again,” said Ben. “You are going 
to walk, hear me, walk, across that pasture. 
Don’t you run a step, that’s my advice and 
it’s my say-so. If you run or go faster than 
a slow walk I won’t say what will happen. I 
will tell you when to start and how fast to go 
and when to climb the fence. A bull won’t 
attack you if you don’t show fear, anyhow 
this animal won’t. Lots of times you have to 
go across pastures and you ought to know how. 
Do just as I say. In you go.” 

Paul reeled with heartsickness but went 
through the gate, which Ben held open. He 
fixed his eyes on a place in the fence opposite 
and kept his eyes straight ahead. He wanted 
to run. He became stiff -legged and he turned 
his eyes toward the animal but kept his head 
from turning. Ben called to him that he was 





‘‘Now Turn Around and Walk Back/’ Shouted Ben 



AT THE HERMIT’S 37 

doing well and the sound startled him terribly, 
as at first he thought it was the bull. As he 
neared the fence his pace increased in spite of 
efforts to walk slowly. He was just about to 
mount the woven and barbed wire fence when 
he heard Ben call. He feared it was to tell him 
the bull had started for him. 

“Now turn around and walk back,” shouted 
Ben. 

At first Paul thought he would not “hear,” 
but something within seemed dissatisfied with 
that, so he removed his hands from the fence 
for which they itched and turned back. Com- 
ing back, Paul had the bull more in his eye and 
he felt less fear. In fact, as he approached the 
gate he slowed down considerably and might 
have given one the impression that going 
through bull pastures was an everyday occur- 
rence for him. 

“Good boy,” said Ben and slapped Paul on 
the back. “Didn’t get killed, did you? ” 

“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Paul. “I’m glad 
now anyhow. Mother will be glad too, when 


38 SQUAW POINT 

she hears how I went through the bull pas- 
ture. ’ ’ 

1 4 She might give you a licking , 9 9 said Ben. 

Paul, recovering his spirits, chattered about 
his exploit. He had gone through the bull pas- 
ture with the bull present. He had not been 
attacked or killed, though he might have been, 
by the ferocious bull. 

“That wasn’t a bull,” said Ben. “That’s an 
old steer that Uncle is pasturing for a man. 
He wouldn’t hurt a fly — too lazy to switch his 
tail.” 

“I thought it was a bull,” said Paul. 

‘ 4 It was a bull to you all right, ’ ’ replied Ben. 
“I thought the old steer would do well enough 
for a fraternity stunt, an initiation.” 


Ill 


RICHES 

Ben and Paul were both busy these days. Paul 
ranged about the two-acre tract where the cot- 
tage was and gathered wood for the stove. 
His father had bought him an ax bigger than 
a hatchet and smaller than a man’s ax and he 
was learning how to swing this and to chop 
where he looked. The woods were full of dead 
limbs, pine knots from decayed logs, and trees 
that had fallen, which afforded a wealth of 
fuel. Paul was learning the names of the trees. 
When no one at the cottage knew he would ask 
Ben and if Ben did not know they would ask 
the Hermit. Paul’s mother knew a good many 
trees, especially those that grow in Massa- 
chusetts, and Aunt Dorothy was pretty good at 
getting the names right. 

Ben helped Uncle Erickson in the hayfield and 


89 


40 SQUAW POINT 

in the corn. But Uncle Erickson was given to 
finding reasons for not working with regularity 
and Ben had leisure. The two boys went about 
together and talked about what they w T ould do 
with a million dollars. Paul thought he would 
buy a hundred automobiles and have men to 
take care of them and run them. Ben wanted a 
motor boat and somebody to teach him French. 
He thought that if he could speak French he 
would like to travel round and round the world 
and do nothing else. He’d talk French, too, 
where Dorothy would overhear him and be sur- 
prised. 

Bill Olson used to talk with the boys. Bill 
had promised himself that he would have a cot- 
tage on the lake. Bill had been raised on the 
lake and had picked berries there as a boy. 
Got his spending money and money for his 
clothes that way. That was thirty years ago. 
He now lived on his farm four miles back from 
the lake, an old bachelor, pretty prosperous 
with wheat at two dollars a bushel. Bill liked 
trees, and, since cottagers had begun to appear 


RICHES 41 

at Squaw Point, deemed it might be advisable 
to buy a frontage down there himself. No, he 
had not bought land yet, but he might later, 
and in the meantime he was looking around. 
About every Sunday Bill would be seen at the 
Point, besides some week-day nights when he 
came down to Uncle Erickson’s. 

One warm and lustrous Sunday in late July 
the boys were going through the woods and ran 
upon Bill Olson. Bill was looking for a good 
lot among those that Uncle Erickson had 
staked out for possible purchasers. 

Bill was crushing something in his hand and 
then he would smell his palm. The something 
was buds from a small tree. He would pick 
and crush and smell and then do it all over 
again, greatly intent. The boys looked and 
waited. 

“Do you know what kind of tree that is?” 
he asked with an air of immense elation. 

Ben thought it was a popple with yellowish 
leaves. Paul said it might be maple. 

“No siree,” said Bill. 


42 SQUAW POINT 

‘ i What is it?” asked Ben. 

“It’s bammigan,” said Bill. “Bammigan, 
sure as fate. The real thing. Great stuff that 
If I had a lake lot I wouldn’t cut a stick of 
that. Bammigan, bammigan.” 

“What’s bammigan?” mused Ben. 

“I’ve smelled that somewhere before,” said 
Paul. 

“Maybe it’s a medicine,” said Ben. 

“I know now,” said Paul. “One of my 
teachers brought some to class. But she didn’t 
call it that. It was — it was — balm of something 
or other. Oh, I’ve got it now; it was balm of 
Gilead. There’s an old man that sings about 
the balm of Gilead and I’ve heard about it in 
Uncle’s drugstore.” 

Bill had passed out of sight and the boys 
picked more buds and smelled the tonic odor 
and pinched their fingers together through the 
sticky balsam. 

“Isn’t that worth something?” asked Ben, 
who now wanted to be worth two million dol- 
lars or twice as well off as a traveling man. 


RICHES 


43 

“If it’s a great medicine it’s worth some- 
thing, ’’said Paul. ‘ ‘ And people would not sing 
about it, especially in church, if it was not able 
to cure disease and perhaps work miracles.” 

“Do you think Bill Olson knows how much 
that stuff is worth ?” asked Ben. 

“He knows it’s worth something,’ ’ thought 
Paul, “but he probably does not know its full 
value. If he did he would have the name right. 
He’s ignorant of its real nature. He said he 
wouldn’t cut the trees, but he seemed to care 
more for the smell than anything else.” 

“Do you know what I think?” exclaimed 
Ben. “Bill Olson is just bluffing about trees. 
He has seen Dorothy and he’s coming around 
here looking for lots and talking trees. He’s 
lived here all these years and just now it’s all 
trees and lake lots for him. Bill Olson never 
could learn French, even if he had a teacher, 
and it would make Dorothy snicker to hear an 
old codger like Bill Olson try to speak it where 
she could overhear it. Paul, when is the best 
time to learn French?” 


U SQUAW POINT 

“When you are young,’ ’ said Paul. 

“Thirteen or fourteen years old up to 
twenty, that’s what I thought,” was Ben’s 
comment. 

Ben was silent a long time. They went sin- 
gle file over the path, followed so often by 
Uncle Erickson’s cows and in more recent 
years by the Hermit’s pigs, which this year 
were two reddish specimens of the speed of a 
race horse. If you ran upon one of those pigs 
it would “woof” and shoot off without taking 
time for a start, in which it resembled par- 
tridges. The path led under heavy pines, 
where the ground was brown and slippery 
with pine needles and along low ground, 
where the balm of Gilead trees were a dense 
thicket. 

“Paul,” said Ben, “do you want to be 
rich? ” 

“I never thought much about it,” said Paul. 
“Mother has always bought my clothes. But 
if I was rich I would buy a different kind of 
clothes. They buy my shoes two sizes too big, 


RICHES 45 

and Father backs up Mother after she has 
bought me things to wear. If I had money I’d 
go to a clothing store and ask for things that 
would fit exactly and when these were gone I’d 
go down again and get more clothes.” 

“I’d like to he rich,” said Ben. “Besides 
going round and round the world and learning 
French I’d like to have people see me go by. 
I’d come back to Squaw Point and let people 
see me. Maybe the same people would be here 
then that are here now. They’d look up and 
say, * Who’s that?’ and somebody would say, 
4 That’s Ben Long, that used to live here. He’s 
rotten rich and can speak foreign languages. 
Travels a good deal — been all round the world. ’ 
Then I would come around and not say much, 
but when I paid for something I’d pull out 
enough silver to fill a bait can. Then they’d all 
look surprised. I’d give the Hermit a thou- 
sand dollars to explain everything about the 
sky and when I wanted new fishing tackle I’d 
send an order to Chicago that would make the 
postmaster drop dead.” 


46 SQUAW POINT 

“Say, I wish I was rich too,” exclaimed Paul, 
seeing the vision. 

“I have a scheme that’ll make ns both rich,” 
declared Ben, who stood still in the path and 
glowed with faith, his faded overalls, torn 
shirt and flappy hat, a hat even appearing scal- 
loped, formed the base husk of a soul white with 
ambition. 

“No,” said Paul. “You thought of it, and 
it’s no fair for me to be rich too. You might 
let me have enough for clothes and one or two, 
say ten, automobiles. But you thought it all 
out and I wouldn’t take very much. You keep 
it, Ben.” 

“What would I do with all of it?” asked 
Ben. “There’ll be ten times as much as I 
could use. I’ll do this, Paul. I’ll take my two 
million first and then you take the next two 
and then I’ll take another two and so on. You 
can be watching me to see how I spend my 
money and it’ll be easier that way. 

“We can be thinking up ways of spending the 
money,” continued Ben. “We couldn’t think 


RICHES 


47 


now of all the things we’d do with it, but we 
can later. You be thinking and I’ll be thinking. 
We might ask the Hermit.” 

“We’d want to keep some,” suggested Paul. 
“Mother and Father talk about saving money 
for a rainy day. Father says he wishes he had 
begun to save sooner.” 

“I know a place where we could hide a lot 
of money,” said Ben. “When we take in a 
hundred dollars we ’ll keep half of it and I know 
where’s a place to hide it.” 

“Where?” asked Paul. 

“ In a hollow tree, ’ ’ said Ben. “ We ’d have it 
in silver dollars, so the squirrels couldn’t chew 
it up, and hide it in a hollow tree. There ’s one 
way back in the woods where nobody ever 
goes.” 

“Would the money we got be paper or sil- 
ver?” asked Paul. 

“Silver dollars,” said Ben. “It would come 
that way. Then we could have the money 
changed into bills, except what we hid in the 
hollow tree. But it would nearly all be silver 


48 SQUAW POINT 

dollars at first, for everybody would pay a 

dollar a box.” 

“Box of what V 7 inquired Paul. 

“Ointment,” replied Ben. “Balm of Gilead 
ointment. That’s the way we would make the 
money. You heard what Bill Olson said about 
these trees. The woods are full of balm of 
Gilead trees and every tree has a fortune in it. 
You thought they were maples and I have 
lived here all my life and thought they were a 
yellowish popple. Nobody ever told me they 
were genuine balm of Gilead trees. Bill Olson 
was excited when he found ’em, and he’s lived 
around here all of his life, and then he got the 
name wrong. We’re the only two that know 
the trees are here and know the right name for 
them and know how much they’re worth. I’ve 
heard something about balm of Gilead. I think 
it cures blind people. Paul, all we ’ve got to do 
is to keep our mouths shut and make up some 
ointment and take in the money.” 

“Mother wants to know where I am all the 
time,” lamented Paul. 


RICHES 


49 


“ We’ll sell through agents,” said Ben, “like 
nursery agents, that come around with pictures 
of apples and plums as big as potatoes. Of 
course we can’t be out on the road all the time, 
but we can carry on the business.” 

“We could have agents and give them orders 
what to do,” said Paul. “I have heard Father 
tell about agents and salesmen and district 
managers and the home office and the fac- 
tory. ’ 9 

“That’s it,” said Ben. “You know about 
business and I can collect the cans.” 

“I’d have agents going out in Fords,” said 
Paul. “I could meet the district manager once 
a day and he could tell the others and then all 
the agents could start out and sell the 
farmers.” 

“You do that,” said Ben, “and I’ll get the 
cans and fill them.” 

“There are quite a few cans behind our cot- 
tage,” said Paul. 

“I can row the boat across the lake and pick 
up lots of cans around some camping places 


50 SQUAW POINT 

over there,” said Ben. “Then Bill Olson uses 
snuff and he throws away snuff boxes by the 
hundred. You can track him by snuff boxes. 
But I suppose the boxes and cans ought to be 
all the same size.” 

‘ ‘ That isn ’ t necessary, ’ ’ said Paul. “We can 
put up a half dozen in one kind of can and then 
another half dozen in a different kind of can. 
The agents can show just one kind of can or 
charge two dollars for the biggest ones.” 

“My,” said Ben, “you know business.” 

“Father says it’s just as necessary to sell 
goods as it is to put them up,” said Paul. “Ill 
meet the agents or the district manager up 
beyond the cottage every evening and give him 
instructions, and you have the ointment hidden 
somewhere so it can be delivered.” 

“My idea,” said Ben, “would be to row it 
across the lake and leave it on the island at the 
mouth of Gull River. The agents can wade to 
the island and carry the crates back to where 
their Fords are. The next morning they can 
get off bright and early to sell it. The money 


RICHES 


51 


can be left in tbe same place, in sacks. I’d 
row over with a load of ointment and row back 
with the money.” 

“The agents would want a commission,” ob- 
served Paul. 

“What’s that?” asked Ben. 

“They’d want a per cent,” explained Paul. 
“We’d have to divide up with them. They 
can’t work for nothing. We’ll let each agent 
furnish his own car and pay his own expenses 
and give him half of the receipts.” 

“That’s too much,” thought Ben. 

“If we see that they are making too much 
money we can cut down the per cent or say 
that times are hard,” responded Paul. 

The next thing to do was to gather the buds 
for making the ointment. The boys hid them 
in a stump which had been burned to the ground 
on one side. The unburned portion constituted 
the back of a rude bin and branches and leaves 
concealed the store of buds which the boys 
gathered. 

“What makes your hands smell so?” asked 


52 SQUAW POINT 

Paul’s mother after one of his bud-gathering 

trips. 

“They smell like a drugstore,” added 
Dorothy. 

Paul felt guilty and was afraid the secret 
would be out. 

“Oh, there are all kinds of smells in the 
woods,” he said lamely. 

“You boys are up to something,” ventured 
Dorothy, who had passed a few words with Ben 
as he had lingered afar off but within talking 
distance of the cottage. 

“If it’s anything you will hear more about 
it,” replied Paul, feeling more important than 
he cared to reveal. 

The boys had collected as many as a bushel 
of buds, working with zeal. Then they thought 
it was time to do the mixing. 

“What’ll we mix them with?” asked Paul. 

“Let’s see,” said Ben. “There’s butter and 
bacon fat and soap and honey. Maybe other 
things. What do you think would be best?” 

Paul said that in the song he heard in church 


RICHES 53 

honey was mentioned as well as balm of Gilead. 
He thought milk and honey and balm of Gilead 
were all mentioned in the same song or in the 
Bible anyhow. 

“Pd get some milk,” said Ben, “but our 
cows would kick the daylights out of me, and 
Uncle Erickson would catch me at it.” 

“Get some butter,” suggested Paul. 

“Aw, we separate the milk and the cream all 
goes to town,” explained Ben. 

“Then we can use the cream,” argued Paul. 

“It ought to mix pretty thick,” thought Ben. 

“We can boil it down,” said Paul. 

Under a friendly willow, which grew where 
the water had stood earlier in the season, a 
motley collection of cans awaited. Some were 
rusty inside even if gorgeously ornamented 
outside by illustrations of salmon leaping falls 
in rivers or of eagles or Indians. Red-cheeked 
tomatoes — pictures of them — adorned many of 
the cans, and peas in lovely green and opened 
pods were well represented. The tin covers 
often hung as by a thread, jagged and threat- 


54 SQUAW POINT 

ening blood poison to hapless fingers. Some of 

the cans had held coffee and were inoffensive. 

“That would work all right,’ ’ said Ben, “if 
nobody saw the smoke. But if we start a fire 
in the woods there will be more than twenty 
people here to put it out. Bill Olson would be 
here in no time. They are awfully afraid of 
forest fires around here.” 

“Then we could try honey,” said Paul. 

“That’s the best stuff,” replied Ben, 
greatly relieved. “We can hunt up a bee tree 
and get the honey. Balm of Gilead mixed with 
honey would sell like hot cakes.” 

“We could put on a higher price,” said Paul. 

“It would cure more diseases, wouldn’t it?” 
asked Ben. 

Paul thought that the ointment would cure 
lots of things inside a person if honey were an 
ingredient. It could be counted on to cure 
sores and cuts and things like that anyhow, but 
put up with honey the medicine would be good 
for one’s insides. Probably it would cure hay 
fever. 


RICHES 


55 


“I know wliat hay fever is,” said Ben 
eagerly. “ People come to the pine woods 
every year to keep from having hay fever. 
They sneeze and their eyes run.” 

“If I had to die I would rather die of heart 
disease,” said Paul. “That takes a fellow off 
quick . 9 9 

Day after day the hoys coursed the woods 
looking for a bee tree. They would first look 
for bees, but there were more yellow jackets 
and striped flies and wasps and hornets and 
other insects than real bees. And they had a 
time keeping track of bees that they did find. 
The bees flew fast and were soon out of sight. 
Several farmers had hives of bees, so there 
was no certainty that a bee when found did 
not belong to a hive. When the boys did feel 
sure they knew which way a bee had gone home 
and tried to find another bee which by crossing 
the line of flight of the first bee would give 
them the direction of the expected bee tree, the 
intersection of lines would as likely as not be 
in the lake or somewhere else where no bee 


56 SQUAW POINT 

tree could possibly exist. W 7 hen they did not 

make headway with bees they gathered more 

balm of Gilead buds. Ben said they would 

keep. 

Ben would go over to the Parker cottage and 
get a drink and hang around until Paul could 
get away with him. Sometimes Ben would 
help Paul get up the wood, which was done 
hurriedly. The burs brought home in Paul’s 
clothing told of long expeditions in search of 
the elusive bee tree. 

One day they ran across the Hermit, who 
had a garden in a clearing. Ben swung the 
conversation around to medicines and asked the 
Hermit what the best medicine in the world 
was. 

“For mind or body?” asked the Hermit. 

“Why, when you’re sick,” said Ben. 

Then the Hermit told about a lady of a long 
time ago, perhaps Shakespeare’s wife, who 
stumped a doctor by asking him if he could 
minister to a mind diseased. The Hermit said 
a person might be sick in his mind or in his 


RICHES 57 

body, but for a good many things he used 
witch hazel. 

“Ever try balm of Gilead f” asked Ben. 

“It has a magical name,” replied the Her- 
mit, and he said some lines of poetry. 

Ben looked knowingly at Paul and when the 
boys were going home told Paul that they were 
on the right track. It might take time to put 
the ointment on the market, but there was big 
money in it. He felt surer than ever about 
that. The Hermit had spoken as if there was 
a lot behind what he had said and he spoke of 
magic anyhow. 

The boys gave up looking for a bee tree that 
day and took the path that led by the old stump 
where their store of balm of Gilead buds was 
concealed. As they approached they saw signs 
that did not look right and when they came 
nearer they were dismayed. Somebody or 
something had been there and the buds had 
been scattered about and the place was a 
sight. 

“It's Bill Olson’s work,” was Ben’s first 


58 SQUAW POINT 

remark. “He’s caught on and this is his way 

of showing it.” 

“Bill wouldn’t do such a thing,” thought 
Paul. 

“No, I guess he wouldn’t,” assented Ben. 
“But who did? Somebody’s been here and 
found out our secret and is trying to keep us 
from getting rich.” 

“Let’s look for tracks,” said Paul. 

So the boys went around the stump and 
crashed through the bushes in their eagerness 
to find who had been there. Suddenly some- 
thing jumped up and started down the path 
with a “woof.” 

“It’s the Hermit’s pigs,” ejaculated Ben dis- 
gustedly. “They’ve rooted these buds six 
ways for Sunday.” 

“Never mind, Paul,” said Ben, “come down 
tomorrow and we’ll go fishing for picks and 
pikes.” 

So the boys agreed to catch picks and pikes. 


IV: 


PICKS AND PIKES 

Old Man Westby bad stated with emphasis 
that a man conld go out after supper and in 
two hours’ time catch as many fish by still- 
fishing as by trolling all day in the hot sun. 
But then Old Man Westby rarely went fishing 
himself. He had lived under Squaw Point for 
forty years and might have caught enough fish 
to fill a box car. If he used to fish much he 
did not any more, but he could tell more about 
fishing than others who went out regularly. 
Perhaps he caught fish in the winter through 
the ice. He said he did. He once speared a 
twenty-eight pound pickerel, so he said. A 
man was out with Old Man Westby and they 
were watching for fish. They had speared 
quite a few, ordinary size, and had thrown 
them out on the ice to freeze. The men were 


59 


60 SQUAW POINT 

looking into the water when something came 
along. Was it a fish? By glory, it was a 
monster. They could see just the head and 
some of the body. It darkened the whole space 
below the hole in the ice. The other man 
rammed down his spear and hit the creature 
right back of the head, hit him hard too. The 
fish gave a flirt with its head and went on, 
breaking off the spear handle where it joined 
the spear. But the biggest fish Old Man 
Westby got weighed twenty-eight pounds. You 
can spear enough fish in one day in winter to 
last till spring, said Old Man Westby, which 
may be the reason he frowns upon going fishing 
himself with hook and line. His boys go fish- 
ing and keep the table supplied with fish. 

“How do you catch fish through the ice?” 
Paul inquired. 

“Oh, have a fish house,” said Westby. “This 
is about four by six feet. It is lined with tar 
paper or building paper to keep the cold out 
and to keep it dark too. It has to be dark 
inside so you can see into the water. You have 


PICKS AND PIKES 61 

a little stove to keep you warm and you sit 
there on a chair and watch through a hole in 
the ice for the fish to come along. There is a 
decoy minnow that you hold still in the water 
or you can make it run in a circle by pulling 
the string, the tail being set crooked. There 
you sit, perfectly comfortable, and wait for the 
big fellows to poke their noses under the hole. 
Sometimes they barely move when they come 
up to the minnow and again, especially when 
the minnow is moving, the fish will dash at it 
and then you have to be quicker than greased 
lightning to spear your fish. You slide the fish 
house out over the ice to where there is seven 
or eight feet of water under you and chop a 
hole in the ice. I used to have a mark on a 
tree to go by and set my fish house just so.” 

The way to catch the biggest fish was often 
talked over by Ben and Paul, Ben doing most 
of the talking and Paul listening and asking all 
kinds of questions. There were still-fishing 
and trolling. Ben favored trolling. If one 
wished to still fish he could find the drop-off 


62 SQUAW POINT 

opposite the Point and measure with his pole 
and find twenty feet of water. J ust at the edge 
of the drop-off was a good place to throw in. 
The fish feed along the edge of the drop-off. 
As they come along down the lake and strike 
the edge of the drop-off they don’t go up 
toward the surface hut just keep feeling their 
way along the edge. So they pile up and you 
can always catch something still-fishing. But 
the old whoppers are just as likely to be found 
somewhere else. They like to be alone and you 
may get the biggest fish of the season when you 
are trolling near weeds or about a quarter of 
a mile out from Uncle Erickson’s. 

Ben caught more picks and pikes than any 
other kinds. Pikes make the best eating, 
though picks are just about as good. Pikes 
won’t keep long. They go bad quicker than 
any other fish. A pike will strike hard and go 
to the bottom with your line. A pick will come 
to the boat with its mouth wide open, on the 
surface of the water, sometimes, shaking its 
head, and if he isn’t hooked to a fare-you-well 


PICKS AND PIKES 63 

he’s likely to spit out the hook just when you 
see him in the frying-pan. Bass? It’s fun to 
catch them, hut they are bony, the rock bass, 
and they have a taste. Some people like them 
too. 

“What bait shall we take?” inquired Paul 
excitedly. 

“Frogs,’ ’ replied Ben. “The fish are taking 
frogs now. Sometimes they take frogs and 
again they want minnows. Uncle uses pork, 
fat pork, and he pulls ’em in too. But you have 
to keep grass otf your bait. A pick won’t look 
at a bait that has weeds on it. Some use arti- 
ficial bait and get fish.” 

“If we should catch more fish than we could 
eat what would we do with them?” asked Paul. 

“Oh, give ’em away, but you can’t give fish 
away sometimes. The hens eat ours, or the 
dog. You ought to see Mike get outside of fish. 
He’ll eat fish from the beach that have been 
dead a week. Crunch ’em right down. He 
must have a stomach like an ostrich. The 
crows like dead fish. Leave fish on the beach 


64 SQUAW POINT 

and pretty soon the crows are saying caw, caw, 
and pecking away till there is not a bit of meat 
left. One time an old crow was out here teach- 
ing three young ones to eat dead fish. You 
ought to have heard the noise. They wouldn’t 
learn, I guess, and the old crow was talking to 
them. They made such a racket that Uncle 
got the shot gun and went out and killed the 
whole bunch with one barrel. Then they 
stopped. ’ ’ 

As the boys talked Ben was getting the boat 
ready. It had to be bailed out first. Like many 
of Uncle Erickson’s possessions it was not in 
the best of condition. It needed paint, real 
white lead paint, to close up some ugly looking 
seams and restore the water-soaked blackish 
wood to something like its original resistance 
to water. The oars had been worn to a blunt 
point by contact with sand and the anchor was 
a casting from a worn-out harvester, weighing 
all that a boy could lift and ill-suited for hold- 
ing a boat, except by sheer weight. There were 
traces of red paint on the casting and it 


PICKS AND PIKES 65 

sprawled like a turtle run over by a road ma- 
chine. The anchor “rope” was a chain, sev- 
eral lengths of dog chain snapped together. 

“Is the boat safe?” asked Paul. 

“Always has been,” said Ben. “She’s get- 
ting old, but I guess it wouldn’t sink. It’s a 
flat-bottomed one and wouldn’t tip over easy.” 

Paul said he would not want to go out if the 
boat was not safe. Ben said he was not in 
favor of taking chances. The lake could be 
pretty ugly. But he was used to it. 

Ben had a faded line, which he thought would 
hold. His plan was to draw in and when he 
got the fish near the boat to give the line a 
rather heavy pull while the fish was still under 
water. This would give such a boost to the 
fish that it would keep on coming after it left 
the water and the strain on the line would be 
so much less. Ben tied the end of the line to 
his leg and fished while rowing. When he got 
a bite he would row with one hand, alternating, 
and pull in. If there was a fish on he would 
drop both oars. Paul fished out of the stern, 


66 SQUAW POINT 

sitting gingerly erect, for there was no back 
support to the stern seat. Paul used a feath- 
ered hook with a spinner of metal, not being 
quite prepared to handle the frogs. 

Paul caught the first one. It was beginner’s 
luck, said Ben. The pick, big enough for a 
meal at the cottage, jumped about in the bot- 
tom of the boat and freed itself from the hook, 
finally bringing up against the rower’s seat. 
Ben picked it up and dropped it into the closed 
stern box, the top of which formed a seat, Paul 
rising and bending forward while Ben opened 
the box. Paul was joyful and was thinking of 
what they would say at the cottage when he 
walked in with a fish thirty inches long. Aunt 
Dorothy would laugh and say things and his 
mother would praise him. He was running out 
his line, when he suddenly jumped off the seat 
and looked astonished. 

“ That’s nothing,” said Ben, “just the old 
pick thrashing around.” 

Paul felt ashamed for having been startled, 
but he was not expecting such a thump under 


PICKS AND PIKES 67 

the seat. The next time the fish jumped Paul 
hitched only a little and after that he kept from 
appearing to notice the commotion in the 
stern. 

The boys had been so interested in fishing 
that they had not taken note of the looks of 
the lake. Paul had confidence in the boating 
skill of Ben, and Paul’s mother had felt safe, 
for Ben was a good swimmer. Ben had indeed 
advertised his ability by performing stunts, 
jumping and diving from Uncle Erickson’s 
boat when the Parker family were upon the 
lake. Paul saw that clouds were forming and 
that the water did not look the same as before. 
Suddenly a gust of wind struck them. 

“ Guess we better get out of this,” remarked 
Ben, who began to pull in his line after taking 
a look over his shoulder to the west. 

For the last half hour the boys had been still- 
fishing and the anchor was down. Ben told 
Paul to pull in the anchor. Ben would keep the 
boat head on to the wind, which was now begin- 
ning to roll up the waves, first wrinkling the 


68 SQUAW POINT 

water by sudden force and then heaving it into 

waves which broke in white caps. 

‘ 4 Pull her in,” shouted Ben. “When we get 
that anchor in we’ll go home and come again 
some other day.” 

Paul needed no urging to haul in the dog 
chain. They were now a half mile out and the 
boat was beginning to rock deeply. Paul knelt 
at the side of the old tub and struggled to get 
the anchor aboard without leaning much over 
the side. The anchor seemed to weigh a ton. 
When under water it did not seem to lose much 
of its weight and it was a heavy pull for Paul 
to get the casting above the water. Then he 
had to struggle to get it as high as the side of 
the boat. He poised it for a moment on the 
side and without in the least foreseeing what 
might happen let it fall within. Uncle Erickson 
would never have let the anchor fall into the 
boat like that, for he handled the old boat as 
if it were eggs, rotten eggs at that. Nor would 
Ben have been so foolish as to let the anchor 
plunge from the top of one side of the boat 


PICKS AND PIKES 69 

to the bottom. But Paul was inexperienced 
with materials. He never knew just how much 
a thing would stand. And his eagerness was 
all to get the anchor aboard. Ben saw that the 
anchor was where it might fall and do damage 
and said look out. Paul thought Ben meant 
that Paul should look out and not drop the 
anchor on his foot. So Paul let go of the 
anchor and it fell into the bottom of the boat, 
where it struck one of the partly decayed floor 
pieces, dealing it a blow that sprung the strip 
as well as broke it. Water spurted through the 
break. 

“ Jerusalem/ ’ shouted Ben. “But hail.” 

Paul was white with terror. 

“Empty the frogs and hail,” called Ben. 

The frogs were in a three-pound coffee pail 
with holes punched through the cover to give 
them air. 

“Let ’em go,” added Ben. “We can get 
more.” 

Paul managed to pull off the cover and let 
the frogs out. Some hopped about in the boat 


70 SQUAW POINT 

and others jumped overboard. Paul bailed 
desperately. In his trembling and tearful 
haste he caught the coffee pail under a splinter 
and ripped it off. More water rushed in. The 
waves were rolling higher and there were 
flashes of lightning. Big drops of rain fell. 
Ben was pulling at the oars, endeavoring to 
keep the boat from taking water over the sides. 
Paul bailed and bailed in desperation. The 
water spread over the flat bottom and Paul 
could not get a full pail of it. When Ben had 
bailed out preparatory to going out on the lake 
he had stood on one edge of the boat, thus tip- 
ping the boat up and allowing the water to 
flow to one side where it could be bailed out in 
pailfuls. But now it was not possible to bail 
in such an artful manner and the water gained 
on Paul, who was squatting and bailing with 
water nearly to his shoe tops. 

“I can’t keep ahead of the water,” moaned 
Paul. 

Ben did not answer. He was looking one way 
and another across the lake and putting all his 


PICKS AND PIKES 71 

strength into the oars. He was not pulling 
straight for shore, but seemed to be trying to 
get to some one place in the lake. 

“Oh, Ben,” called out Paul. “Go to shore 
quick. ’ ’ 

But Ben kept rowing and looking. The boat 
was nearly half full of water by this time and 
whenever it turned its side to the waves more 
water came in. Paul was wet through by the 
rain and from bailing and keeping down in the 
boat. His hat had been carried away by one 
of the first gusts of wind. 

“We’re going to die,” sobbed Paul. 

“She won’t sink,” said Ben, looking over his 
shoulder to see where he was going and glanc- 
ing to points on opposite shores. “She won’t 
sink and if she tries to she has another guess 
coming. ’ ’ 

“Do you think I’ll go to hell?” asked Paul. 
“I told a lie once.” 

“Not this way,” replied Ben confidently. 
“Too much water.” 

Ben was headed for the middle of the lake 


72 SQUAW POINT 

and was coaxing tlie old boat along as well as 
he could. Pretty soon Ben appeared very cer- 
tain about something and he told Paul to stop 
bailing and to shorten the anchor chain by 
snapping it up short. Paul was told to make 
the chain about ten feet long. 

While the boys were going farther out into 
the lake people on shore saw the plight the 
boys were in. Paul’s mother was on the beach 
and others came running. Uncle Erickson de- 
plored the fact that there wasn’t another boat 
within a mile. The Hermit had a boat but he 
had gone out that morning and had not come 
back. Probably the Hermit had drawn his boat 
up on the beach somewhere and was in the 
woods hunting up specimens or something. 

“If them boys will sit in the boat or hang 
onto it if she goes under, they’ll be all right,” 
remarked Uncle Erickson, hitching his vest into 
position by taking hold of the pointed extremi- 
ties in front with both hands. 

“My poor Paul,” sobbed Mrs. Parker. 
“He’s such a good boy.” 


PICKS AND PIKES 73 

“I tell ye they’re all right if the boat don’t 
turn over on them,” said Uncle Erickson 
comfortingly. “Let ’em stay right in the boat 
and she’ll carry a lot of water and the hoys 
too. That’s why I like a wooden boat. They 
won’t sink, not generally. Over at Morton’s 
summer resort they’ve got a lot of metal boats 
with air chambers. Suppose a hole gets into 
an air chamber. Then the boat would sink like 
a grindstone if anything happened to it.” 

“Do something, do something,” pleaded Mrs. 
Parker. 

“They’re all right yet,” replied Uncle Erick- 
son, “them boys. As long as they are all right 
they are all right. I can see their heads above 
water yet. I wish the Hermit hadn’t gone out 
with his boat, then we could take it and row 
over and pick up the boys. Is that your boy, 
Mrs. Parker? I’ve seen the day I could peel 
off my clothes and swim to where the boys are, 
but not since I had inflammatory rheumatism. 
That’s positively the worst disease that ever 
I had. Was laid up for three months. There’s 


74 SQUAW POINT 

a difference too between swimming in smooth 
water and bucking waves. Lake water don’t 
taste any too good when it goes down your 
throttle and the waves are four feet high and 
the water churns into both ears every stroke 
you take. Can your boy swim?” 

“Oh, there’s a boat coming from the other 
side,” exclaimed Mrs. Parker. “The boys may 
be saved yet.” 

“No one in it,” responded Uncle Erickson, 
after looking through his hands at the object. 
“That’s one of the boats from Morton’s sum- 
mer resort that has been driven out by the 
wind. We pick up one or two of Morton’s 
boats on this side after every big storm when 
the wind’s in the west.” 

“Mightn’t it drift to where the boys are?” 
asked Mrs. Parker, still hoping against hope. 

“Not one chance in a million, and then they 
don’t usually leave the oars in. They are not 
sinking so very fast,” added Uncle Erickson. 
“If they don’t mind having a bath they may 
get in yet. She’s about level full of water and 


PICKS AND PIKES 


75 


the boys will have to sit tight or get knocked 
over into the lake. But if they stay steady the 
old boat will stay by them. There was a half- 
breed Indian that had a canoe that would tip 
over if he shifted his chew of tobacco from one 
side of his mouth to ” 

“My poor Paul,” wept Mrs. Parker. “He 
is only a baby.” 

When Paul had shortened the anchor chain, 
Ben told him to get ready to drop the anchor 
overboard when told to do so. Ben told Paul 
to do as he said and do it quick. Paul got the 
anchor ready to drop from the boat side and 
Ben kept rowing and looking for the right 
place. 

Suddenly Ben yelled, “Let her go Gal- 
lagher ! ’ ’ 

Paul dropped the casting off the side. It 
sank only a short distance, as could be seen 
from the slack chain. Ben dropped the oars 
and pulled in on the chain and brought the boat 
back until he bent over the anchor. 

“Just what I expected,” he said, holding to 


76 SQUAW POINT 

the chain with one hand, and beginning to sing 
in a squawky voice about a home on the rolling 
deep. “Two feet of water.” 

“Aren’t we going to drown!” asked Paul. 

“Naw, here’s the island,” said Ben. “Here’s 
the island that’s in the middle of the lake. I 
thought I could hit it all right. You sight 
across from the Point to the spruce trees one 
way and then you sight from Morton’s boat- 
house to the lone pine the other way and where 
the lines cross is the island. Water’s only two 
feet deep here now; never ’s more than three 
feet. But it’s deeper than Sam Hill off the 
edge of it.” 

“How big is the island!” asked Paul. 

“Half acre,” said Ben, “and we’re right in 
the middle of it. See that bunch of reeds. 
That’s in the middle. I’ve been over here in 
good weather and seen bottom.” 

“Then we won’t sink!” inquired Paul. 

“Not if we stay where we are or somewhere 
else around here. I wouldn’t want to get out 
of the boat and walk in my sleep out here. But 


PICKS AND PIKES 77 

we’re safe enough. The anchor will hold the 
boat and if it didn’t I’d get right out of the 
boat and stand here with the water up to my 
stomach and wait for the cows to come home.” 

‘ ‘I’d do what you did,” said Paul. 

The worst of the storm had passed, though 
the waves were still rolling viciously. The 
trees on the shore were dripping and let down 
showers of water if branches were touched. A 
group stood on the beach straining their eyes 
toward the boys, who had not sunk yet. There 
was a sound of wheels in the water of the ruts 
of the sandy road that ran along the beach and 
Bill Olson came into view, in a wretched old 
buggy that looked dry notwithstanding having- 
been in the downpour. Bill was driving one 
of his plow team, a horse that from the rear 
looked as square as a box car and moved about 
as fast as a box car shunted upon a siding, 
just before it stops moving altogether. 

“They’re anchored on the island,” he said. 

“I thought of that when I first came out,” 
commented Uncle Erickson. “I thought my 


78 SQUAW POINT 

boy was safe out there. Mrs. Parker here — 
her boy’s out in the boat — felt a little worried, 
but I knew the boys would fetch up on the 
island where the water’s shallow. That’s ex- 
actly what they’ve done. I didn’t say anything 
about the island, but I knew it was there.” 

4 ‘ Then the boys are safe,” gasped Mrs. 
Parker, relieved so much that she was faint. 

“Sure,” said Bill Olson. 

“How can we get to them?” asked Mrs. 
Parker. 

“They can bail out and row back,” said 
Uncle Erickson. 

“Better send a boat over there,” said Bill 
Olson. “Maybe they’ve broken an oar. I’m 
going to buy a motor boat next year, next year 
when I put up my cottage right here where 
the rest of you live, and if I had that boat now 
I’d chug over there and bring the boys back.” 

But the Hermit, who had w T atched the storm 
from the other side of the lake, happened to be 
rowing in, and the boys signaled to him. He 
had a beautiful boat and he drove it through 


PICKS AND PIKES 79 

the water as if he wanted to lick the lake. The 
worse the waves were the better the Hermit 
seemed to like going out. He came up to 
where the boys were squatting in the old water- 3 
logged boat and threw over a rope not much 
larger than a clothesline. Ben tied this to the 
bow of Uncle Erickson’s boat and explained 
how it all happened. The Hermit laughed and 
took the boys into his boat and pulled back to 
Uncle Erickson’s landing, which consisted of 
beach in a state of nature except where tin cans 
and junk littered the sand. Uncle Erickson had 
never built a regular boat landing, as he said 
the ice would knock one to pieces if he should 
build one. 

“ Don’t forget the big pick,” said Ben as 
Paul was going ashore, and Paul went back to 
the stern of Uncle Erickson’s boat for the big 
pick, which was still much alive, having had, 
in fact, plenty of water to swim in most of the 
time. 


V 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 

The Hermit had been clearing off a piece of 
land and had used dynamite to blow up the 
stumps. Most of the Hermit’s land was 
wooded and he had to clear away the trees, 
stumps and underbrush for what little plow 
land he seemed to need. He kept no horse or 
cow, just the two reddish pigs, Pope and 
‘Dryden, and a dog. His garden was a fine one 
and he had good things to eat. He went to 
town in his automobile, which he kept in a place 
in the woods under a khaki. 

The Hermit knew just how to use dynamite. 
He would put in a charge and hide behind a 
tree and in just so long a time, zip, it would 
go off and the stump would be blown out and 
left on top of the ground. He knew how to 
put a chain around a stump so the dynamite 


80 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 81 
would blow out the whole stump and not blow 
the chain away. Old Man Westby used to go 
and see the blown-out stumps after the dyna- 
miting was over, but he usually kept away for 
several days for fear there might be dynamite 
left in the ground ready to go off. When he 
had stumped, years ago, people did not use 
dynamite and he was afraid of it. 

One day the Hermit was in town with his 
car and ran across Westby on the street. 
Westby showed a desire to ride home with the 
Hermit instead of going back by team, driven 
by one of the Westby boys, for the wagon was 
loaded with Westbys and supplies. The Her- 
mit was pleased to have Westby go in the car, 
and Westby climbed in, taking a seat beside the 
Hermit. There was a package in the rear 
compartment of the car in which Westby 
showed a furtive interest. The car was going 
along at good speed, when Westby could con- 
ceal his curiosity no longer, for he had his sus- 
picions. 

“What is there in that package V y he finally 


82 SQUAW POINT 

asked bluntly as the car swerved and jolted 

over pits in the sand road. 

‘ 1 Dynamite, ’ ’ was the Hermit ’s reply. 

“You don’t mean it,” gasped Westby. 

“For blowing out stumps,” said the Her- 
mit. 

Westby partly rose up from the seat and sat 
by holding on stiffly with his arms. 

“It might go off,” said Westby. 

The Hermit looked ahead and ran the car, 
as was his wont, with a sort of fight showing 
in the way he took the road. 

“What would happen to us if she blew up?” 
continued Westby. 

“No danger. I packed it in,” said the 
Hermit. 

“We’d go to kingdom come and then some,” 
said Westby, helping to answer his own ques- 
tion. 

The car jolted suddenly. 

“I’m in no hurry,” protested Westby. “I’ll 
be home long before the boys are as it is. I’d 
just as soon go slower.” 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 83 

The Hermit did not slacken speed. 

“ I like the road along the lake,” added 
Westby, “like to look at everything as I go by. 
You can’t see the crops if you go too fast. You 
learn a good deal by going to town if you take 
time to look at things by the road.” 

The Hermit nodded. Maybe he was thinking 
about stars or comets or how fast comets go 
through space. 

“There’s a bargain for somebody in the 
old McCluskey place,” remarked Westby, still 
poised above the seat and resting upon his arms. 
“Slow down when you come along there and 
cast your eye on the grain.” 

“We’ll come back some day and look over 
the farm,” replied the Hermit in his soft voice, 
but not seeming to be thinking about what he 
was saying. 

‘ ‘ Ten to one we never get back here, ’ ’ argued 
Westby in dismay. 

No answer. 

They came to a stretch of newly made road. 
They were in for jolts there for certain. 


84 SQUAW POINT 

Westby could see the end of all, in his mind. 
He did not propose to die yet if he could help 
it. His father had lived to be ninety-one, and 
his grandfather died at eighty. Westby was 
only seventy-two. 

“Sort of pick your way across this new 
road,” he pleaded with the Hermit. “Take it 
easy, you might bust a tire.” 

The Hermit did not seem to hear. The car 
was approaching the new road at what seemed 
to Westby to be frightful speed. The Hermit 
did not seem to know the danger he was run- 
ning into. Probably he was absent-minded. 
Westby regretted that he had not stayed with 
the boys and come in the wagon. Never again 
would he ride in a car without knowing before- 
hand what was in it. He could not understand 
the Hermit. Sometimes the Hermit seemed as 
gentle as a lamb and then again he would show 
a streak of nerve that would make you sit up 
and take notice. There was a lot of fight in the 
Hermit’s nature, somewhere down in his sys- 
tem. The way he jerked that car along showed 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 85 
that. They were coming close to where the 
new road began. 

“Stop,” shouted Westby. “Stop, for God’s 
sake.” 

The Hermit shut off the gasoline and threw 
out the clutch, bringing the car to a stop. 

“What’s the matter?” asked the Hermit. 

“My legs are cramped,” said Westby. “I 
want to walk across this patch of new road. 
I’ll go behind the car.” 

The Hermit ran the car across the new road 
and stopped, waiting for Westby, who was far 
behind. Westby said he would just as soon 
walk clear home; it was only three miles far- 
ther. But the Hermit would not hear to 
Westby ’s suggestion. The Hermit drove more 
slowly the rest of the way and Westby was 
delivered safe and sound by the side of the 
log tool house. 

“Much obliged,” said Westby, “for the 
ride. ’ ’ 

Westby did not see the Hermit again until 
the evening of the next day, when he strolled 


86 SQUAW POINT 

over to the Hermit’s. Ben and Paul were at 

the Hermit’s when Westby arrived. 

“I’m feeling fine,” remarked Westby, 
though no one had inquired how he felt. 

“You don’t feel any the worse for your ride 
home in the ear?” inquired the Hermit. 

“Not a bit, not a bit,” said Westby heartily. 
“But let me tell you something. I was scared 
to death. You didn’t know it, but I was. I 
calculated that we ’d be blown to kingdom come. 
Did you know why I got out and walked when 
we came to the new road? I was afraid we’d 
be blown up. I never took a long breath from 
the time I knew there was dinnymite in the 
car until I got out for good.” 

“Then your legs weren’t cramped when you 
got out before we came to the new road?” in- 
quired the Hermit softly. 

“Yes and no,” said Westby. “I never sat 
down once on that there seat after you said 
dinnymite and my legs were a little stiff, but 
I had reasons for not wanting to go like blazes 
across the new road.” 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 87 


“I wouldn’t have run you into any danger,” 
said the Hermit. “I know dynamite.” 

“I’m not afraid of gunpowder,” asserted 
Westby. “I understand that perfectly, but 
new stuff like dinnymite, that’s for others. I 
have shot a gun too many years not to be ac- 
quainted with gunpowder. Ducks, deer, wild 
geese, gray squirrels, jack rabbits, bear and 
coyotes — I’ve shot ’em all.” 

“I suppose you could tell some good stories 
about shooting,” remarked Paul shyly. 

“He lives in town,” Ben explained, unneces- 
sarily, for the benefit of Old Man Westby. 

“Tell some stories about shooting?” ejacu- 
lated Westby. “They wouldn’t be stories at 
all — they’d be facts, cold facts. I used to go 
to turkey shoots until they refused to let me 
shoot any more. They would put a turkey in 
a crate and let its head stick out and the man 
that killed the turkey by shooting it in the head 
got the bird. We paid ten cents a shot. This 
would be just before Thanksgiving. One time 
it was me and Indian Charlie who had the first 


88 SQUAW POINT 

shots. He stepped up and fired. Mister turkey 
didn’t even look surprised. Then I shot and 
I had one to take home. Then another turkey 
was put up. About a dozen men shot before 
it was my turn. Indian Charlie was one of 
them. The turkey was so far away that it was 
like shooting at a fly speck across the lake. I 
took plenty of time to sight — they never could 
rattle me — and, bing! and I had two turkeys. 
Then some of the others managed to murder 
a few turkeys, but I got another, making three 
in all. Charlie got one for his old squaw. 
Just one. He always seemed to be trying to 
persuade himself that he was the better shot. 
Didn’t like me a little bit. He thought that 
I had traded a canoe that somebody had stolen 
from him and he was always suspicious and 
looking across his nose at me. I figured that 
Charlie thought that if he could shoot better 
than I could he would take a shot at me some 
time, but if he knew I could go him one better he 
wouldn’t dare try it. If he would miss me he 
would know what to expect. I’d come across 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 89 
him in the woods and say ‘ Hello, Charlie, ’ but 
it was hard work for him even to grunt. I 
never exposed my back to him and in those days 
I had my gun handy. 

“ Somebody in town thought to get up a 
match between Indian Charlie and me. It was 
somebody who was working Charlie for some- 
thing and wanted him to beat me to make him 
feel good. We were to have ten shots apiece. 
My gun was laid up for repairs and I was a 
teetotal fool to go into the shoot. They found 
a gun for me. Charlie had his own. Charlie 
shot first and made three hits out of five. I 
missed every shot. Then I began to get 
mad. 

“ ‘You’ve changed the sights on this gun,’ I 
said and I was pretty hot. 

“ ‘Mebbe eye’s crooked,’ said Charlie and I 
could have sent him back to the reservation in a 
sack. It’s bad enough to be insulted by a white 
man. ‘Take another gun,’ they said. ‘I will,’ 
said I, ‘and I’ll pick it out myself.’ Fred Bill- 
ings was in the crowd and I asked him for his 


90 SQUAW POINT 

gun and I asked him to go and get it himself. 
I knew Fred. Indian Charlie shot the next five 
shots and never hit the mark once. I took 
Fred’s gun and fired. The ball went about an 
inch too high, but she held true. So I took a 
pinch less of the muzzle sight in my eye and put 
four balls on the bulls-eye. That put me over 
Indian Charlie, but there had been some rotten 
shooting. I was ashamed to beat so poor a 
shot. 

“Then I told the crowd that I would show 
them how a white man could shoot and I looked 
Charlie square in the eye. I took Fred’s rifle 
— she was a bird, as good as mine any day — 
and piled ten bullets on top of one another 
within the circle. Then that crowd shut up. 
But Charlie didn’t look any too sweet.” 

“Did he ever try to get even with you after 
that?” asked Paul. 

“Yes,” said Westby, “and it was too funny. 
He kept shooting and shooting and finally got 
word to me that he had a gun that would do 
what I did in town when I made ten hits hand 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 91 
running. I examined the bullet marks and 
found that the bullet holes did not match the 
caliber of Charlie’s gun, and also I found the 
punch they used to make the holes with in 
the target, so I asked to be excused from 
being impressed with Charlie’s skill. But some 
of the bucks could shoot as well, but no better, 
than a white man. There are some Indians and 
some white men that couldn’t shoot straight in 
a thousand years. They’re not built for it 
some way and they may be just the ones that 
are always talking about shooting and trying 
to convince themselves that they are good 
shots.” 

“You must have had lots of fun, being able 
to shoot so straight,” ventured Paul. 

“I’ve had fun in my day with the shooting 
gallery people,” said Westby with great satis- 
faction. “I certainly have had fun with them. 
I used to go in, looking like an old hayseed, 
and take a rifle and shoot just once. That was 
to find how much wrong the sights were. I 
never saw a shooting gallery rifle that didn’t 


92 SQUAW POINT 

have its sights doctored. After a while I would 
get a gun that shot as it did when it came from 
the factory and then I would take everything 
there was. When they got acquainted with me 
the gallery men w'ould shut up shop when they 
saw me coming or have urgent business some- 
where else till I went out. 

“My gun was a thirty-five caliber and looked 
small. One time the White boys had a fierce 
Jersey bull they were going to slaughter. 
They asked me if I would shoot him. I said 
yes. So I went up with the thirty-five. They 
took a look at the gun and asked me if I ex- 
pected to kill the bull with that thing. I said 
I did. They tied the bull up between two trees 
about eight feet apart. They put a chain 
around his horns and ran it around one tree 
and then ran it around the other tree and 
brought it back to his horns. That was so that 
if I missed him he couldn’t charge and kill me. 
I stood off about as far as from here to that 
tree you see and let drive. The bull started 
for me, blood in his eye. I let him have 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 93 
another and he stopped. The first bullet had 
gone clear through his head and they found 
it between his forelegs when they cut him up. 
But the second bullet stopped him.” 

* ‘ What if the second ball had missed ?” 
asked Paul. 

“I would have made a sieve of him,” said 
Westby. “But the first bullet killed him. He 
was dead but didn’t know it. The second bul- 
let got there pretty soon after the first. I 
could shoot so the bullets would be only half 
an inch apart when they left the muzzle.” 

Ben had been listening, but he had heard 
nearly all of Old Man Westby ’s accounts be- 
fore. However, he had never heard what be- 
came of Indian Charlie. So he asked about 
what became of the Indian who was such a poor 
shot. 

“Didn’t I ever tell you the last I saw of 
Indian Charlie?” asked Westby. 

“I should think he might have been up to 
something,” added Ben. 

“I didn’t fear him,” said Westby. “I knew 


94? SQUAW POINT 

that if he ever took a shot at me he would miss 
the first time and then I could salt him. I was 
in practice then. I’ve shot many a loon and 
the man that hits a loon with a rifle ball is not 
a bad shot.” 

‘ ‘ What makes them so hard to hit?” asked 
Paul. 

“They say they can dodge a bullet,” said 
Westby. “It amounts to that. Maybe they 
know when you’re going to fire and dive a 
quarter of a second before you pull the trigger. 
Anyhow they get under water pretty spry and 
then come up rods away just as if smiling at 
you. When they are out in the lake there 
isn’t so very much to shoot at either. There’s 
a lot of space surrounding a loon’s head when 
he’s several hundred yards away, and you can 
hit that ten times easier than you can per- 
forate mister loon’s dome of thought. But I 
used to shoot them, but not often; they are no 
good for eating. It was just a waste of am- 
munition. 

“But the ducks I used to get. I used to shoot 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 95 
ducks around Squaw Point until I quacked in 
my sleep. I would clean them and freeze them 
and we would have ducks all winter. Once 
in a while there would come a warm spell and 
they would thaw a little and go bad. But 
ducks, ducks, ducks. Oh, there ’d be acres of 
ducks out in the middle of the lake.” 

“ Where did they all come from?” asked 
Paul. 

“Up north,” said Westby. “They breed 
away up north, in Canada most likely, and 
come down over the Minnesota lakes. This 
lake used to sound like a battlefield, from early 
morning till late at night. Bang, bang, bang, 
and smoke in the air. We used to buy ammu- 
nition by the crate. Parties used to come down 
and stay with me when I bached it. I had a 
house at the Narrows then. One time there 
was a lawyer in the party, a big man. When 
we got ready to go to bed he asked me if there 
was a cellar under the house. I said there 
was, a small one, right under the middle of the 
house. He said he wanted to sleep on the cel- 


96 SQUAW POINT 

lar door. He said lie was the worst man to 
snore and he wanted the cellar door for a 
sounding hoard. By glory, he could snore. 
Instead of saying he wanted to go to bed 
he was in the habit of saying he wanted to 
snore.’ ’ 

“What kind of ducks did you shoot V asked 
Paul. 

“Every kind you can imagine,’ ’ replied 
Westby. “Pin tails, mallards, canvasbacks. 
Some of them would weigh seven or eight 
pounds apiece. There are lots of ducks yet. 
Last winter we had ducks galore. I shot them 
late in the fall and froze them. You have seen 
the wild grapevine this side of the bridge. I 
crawled under that and got nine at one shot. 
I went to get the boat to bring them in and 
found only seven. Two had got away; they had 
merely been stunned. 

“Oh, I was going to tell you about Indian 
Charlie. One fall, this was years ago, I was 
working in my corn. It was deer hunting sea- 
son and there were hunters around. All at 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 97 
once, bing, and a bullet went pretty close to my 
hat. I took it for a stray shot and thought no 
more about it. Pretty soon there was another 
and that one put a little ventilation in my hat. 
I knew that while there might be one shot com- 
ing my way by accident there could not have 
been two, so I set out to investigate. I thought 
I would do a little deer hunting myself. I knew 
which way the balls had come from and I could 
tell the caliber from the way they talked. They 
were forty-fives and that was Indian Charlie’s 
gun. I swung around so I would cut the trail 
that he would be likely to take in getting away 
from Squaw Point and sat down to wait. It 
was late in the afternoon when I saw Indian 
Charlie. He had set his gun up against a tree 
and was about a rod away from it.” 

“Did you pepper him!” asked Ben excitedly. 

“No,” said Westby. “What would have 
been the use! He wasn’t likely to kill me by 
shooting at me — he was too poor a shot — and 
a man has to take his chances with accidents. 
I didn’t think it was necessary to shoot him, 


98 SQUAW POINT 

but I did fix his gun. It was leaning up so it 
was a good mark. I shot the stock to pieces. 
I emptied my magazine, six shots, into it as 
fast as I could pump. Indian Charlie must 
have caught on, for he didn’t try to rescue his 
gun and he knew mighty well who was doing 
the firing. I’ll bet the air was full of splinters. 
After I had wasted enough ammunition in 
shooting his gunstock into kindling wood I 
went home. That was my last experience with 
Indian Charlie, except that I have helped sup- 
port him, if he’s still living. He got too much 
fire water in his system a few months later 
and killed another brave, and he’s leading a 
quiet life in the state prison now, if he’s not 
gone to the happy hunting ground. There may 
be good Indians that are not dead, but not 
Charlie. ’ ’ 

The Hermit asked to be excused for changing 
the subject, but had Westby ever known pigs 
to eat balm of Gilead buds. He said the pigs 
had smelled of balm of Gilead. 

“You are mighty fortunate if that is their 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 99 
odor,” said Westby, striking his hands upon 
his knees at the joke. 

The boys looked at each other but said 
nothing. 

“No,” said Westby, “I never knew pigs to 
take to begilyan, but maybe they do. They 
might waller around in the brush if there was 
some handy.” 

The boys began to feel easier, since Westby 
was looking at his watch and was placing his 
cane in an upright position and acting as if he 
meant to rise. 

“What is the best way to learn to shoot?” 
asked Paul, to turn the conversation away 
from the pigs and their suggestion of balm of 
Gilead. 

“Get a gun,” said Westby, “that is the first 
step, and then shoot.” 

“Buffalo Bill was a great shot,” remarked 
Ben. 

“One of the greatest,” said Westby. “A 
man who knows how to shoot is always willing 
to say a good word for somebody else who can 


100 SQUAW POINT 

shoot. Buffalo Bill was a good man with a 

gun.” 

“He must have shot up a lot of ammunition, 
learning,” suggested Ben. 

“Boy, he shot up tons and tons of it,” as- 
sured Westby. 

“Probably thousands of dollars ’ worth, ” ven- 
tured Ben. 

“Without any question,” answered Westby. 
“He did not have to figure on the cost of am- 
munition. 1 1 

The Hermit had sat looking at the stars and 
watching the clouds that swam across the face 
of the moon. 

“I must be going,” said Westby, and he rose 
stiffly. 

The boys thought they would go along too. 
All three were going around the first turn in 
the path when Westby ’s cane came down on 
something. There was a “woof” and a pig 
jumped up and ran. 

“It’s one of those pesky pigs,” remarked 
Westby, “one of those begilyan pigs. Probably 


DYNAMITE AND GUNPOWDER 101 
them pigs like perfumery and put a little on 
their bristles now and then.” 

Ben pushed Paul in the ribs and the two boys 
kept still till they passed Westby’s house and 
then they laughed. 


VI 


THROUGH THE WOODS 

Ben and Paul never tired of wandering about 
in the woods. They liked to find different kinds 
of trees. There was the black ash tree, with 
its beautiful fretwork bark and compound 
leaves consisting of four single leaves on each 
side and one on the end. They found the 
balsam tree, and studied how it differed from 
the spruce. Uncle Erickson said that balsam 
lumber was “ shaky’ ’ and not so good as pine 
or spruce. But the balsam tree was beautiful 
and had a reputation for fragrance and healing 
power. Spruce trees were numerous, the up- 
land and the lowland spruce. The boys asked 
Uncle Erickson what the difference was and he 
said the upland spruce would not grow in low 
places and the lowland spruce would; they 
looked alike, he said. Among the evergreens 


102 


THROUGH THE WOODS 103 

were the pines. The boys liked the white pine, 
for it scented the air, especially on hot days, 
and the boughs whispered so softly when the 
wind blew. Uncle Erickson said the white 
pine made the best lumber, for it “ worked up 
well. ,, The white pine is the long leaf pine, 
with five leaves in a bunch and many bunches 
growing together on the end of a twig. The 
white pine grows in a sandy soil, and there 
were many of these on the sandy flats and at 
the foot of the lake. There were Norway pines 
too, with two leaves in a bundle, leaves longer 
and stiffer than those of the white pine. The 
bark of the Norway is reddish, and the tree can 
thus be distinguished from the white pine. 

“Did the Norway pine come from Norway V 9 
asked Ben once of Uncle Erickson. 

“Not that I know of,” said Uncle Erickson. 
“The Norway pines have been growing in 
America for a long time, but a whole lot of 
people around here came from Norway.” 

Then the jack pine was another kind of pine. 
Nobody seemed to have a good word to say for 


104 SQUAW POINT 

the jack pine. Yet the jack pine would grow 
as tall in some places, as the white pine, and 
the trunks looked as if they would make pretty 
good hoards. The jack pine has a slightly yel- 
lowish foliage, with stubby and strong leaves 
resembling the leaves of the spruce, but sparser 
and coarser. There were places where only the 
jack pine grew, in fact the way trees grew in 
communities was one of the things that Ben 
and Paul often observed. In some places birch 
trees were most numerous, and the same way 
with poplar, balm of Gilead, white pine, tama- 
rack and spruce. The hardwoods were often 
mixed, oak, ash, maple and elm growing to- 
gether in a friendly way, no one kind being 
much more numerous than another. 

One morning the boys were in the woods and 
the Hermit came along, looking for Pope and 
Dryden ; they had been gone for two days. The 
boys went along with the Hermit to find the 
pigs. The Hermit did not seem to be worrying 
much about the pigs, for he was all the time 
finding things to admire, such as the view 


THROUGH THE WOODS 105 

across the lake, the creamy color of the bark of 
the birch tree, the smell of the raspberry 
bushes when the sun was on them, the appear- 
ance of the sky when there were fleecy clouds 
sailing high up against the blue, the heron that 
flew heavily across the reeds that grew in low 
water, or the red squirrel that sat up and used 
his front feet for hands. The Hermit said that 
red squirrels and raccoons and bears and 
monkeys and men were all related once. He 
seemed to care more for what he saw going 
and coming than for the pigs that he might find 
if he looked long enough. Maybe the Hermit 
kept pigs just to have them run away so he 
could go after them and see things on the way. 
You enjoy looking at things by the road more 
if you are going on business and see things that 
you are not expecting. If you go out to see 
things you may not be so pleased as if you 
just run on things. Anyhow that was the way 
it seemed with the Hermit. Then sometimes he 
would be going along, with plenty of things to 
see, and he would not appear to notice anything 


106 SQUAW POINT 

at all. The boys would talk to him and he 
would not answer or answer as if his mind 
were miles away. The Hermit had a piece of 
poetry that he would quote : 

Most sweet it is with uplifted eyes 

To pace the ground if path there be or none, 
While a fair region round the traveler lies 
Which he forbears again to look upon; 

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, 

The work of fancy, or some happy tone 
Of meditation, slipping in between 
The beauty coming and the beauty gone. 

That was the Hermit. 

The Hermit’s pigs kept him going. They 
could run like the wind and they wanted to see 
the world. They would be grunting along in 
contentment and discover a path. Then off 
they would go. A path had the same effect 
upon them that a saloon has on a drunkard. 
They could not resist a path. If they walked 
into a new path in the woods they would seem 
to crank up by twisting their tails and off 
they’d go. They might have come back even 
if the Hermit had never gone for them, for 


THROUGH THE WOODS 107 

they got fish heads and boiled potatoes to eat 
at the Hermit’s when they came for meals. 
The Hermit’s shore extended down the lake 
two or three miles and was connected with 
woods and marshes and some farm land in a 
wilderness that one could hunt pigs in for days. 

The Hermit liked birds and four-footed ani- 
mals, astronomy and trees. In the daytime he 
probably liked trees best. He liked old trees 
that were just about ready to fall over in a 
wind. 

“ Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds 
sang,” 

he said when the boys and he went under a dead 
white pine, when they were hunting the pigs. 

They all came along to a tree that had been 
struck by lightning. It was split and shivered 
into splinters. 

Ben said it must have been an awful bolt 
that came down and struck the tree. 

The Hermit asked him what made him say 
the bolt came down. 


108 SQUAW POINT 

“What other way could it come?” asked 
Ben. 

“Out of the ground,” said the Hermit. 
“Sometimes trees are struck by bolts that 
come from above and sometimes they are shat- 
tered by bolts that come out of the ground. 
This tree trunk is splintered and broken to 
pieces near the ground. It was struck by a 
bolt from the earth.” 

“The earth was the terminal from which 
the spark jumped,” agreed Paul understand- 
ing^. 

“Where have I lived all my life?” asked Ben, 
amazed. “I never heard of lightning striking 
that way.” 

The Hermit said something about high and 
low potential and positive and negative, and 
Paul understood. 

“I always thought bolts came from the sky,” 
said Ben. “I thought the cellar was the safest 
place in the house in a thunderstorm. That 
must be a mistake.” 

“Are you afraid of lightning?” asked Paul. 


THROUGH THE WOODS 109 

“No,” said Ben, “but I don’t think the flash 
is a good thing for eyes, so I go indoors.” 

“If you want to be safe,” said the Hermit, 
“come up to my cabin to get away from light- 
ning. I have a metal roof.” 

“And you have grounded the corners,” in- 
terrupted Paul, who could not restrain him- 
self. 

“Did you get that in school?” inquired Ben. 

“Studied electricity,” said Paul, abashed for 
having taken the Hermit’s words out of his 
mouth. 

The Hermit told how he had run copper cable 
from each of the four corners of his cabin, 
entering the cable into the ground until mois- 
ture was reached, thus providing a path of least 
resistance for the electric spark in case of a 
thunderstorm. He was as safe inside as a 
man would be handling a live wire with rubber 
gloves. 

“I never knew what those wires were for,” 
said Ben. 

“I noticed them the first time I saw the 


110 SQUAW POINT 

cabin/ ’ said Paul, “and I guessed what they 

were for.” 

“You did not guess,” said the Hermit 
pleasantly, “you knew.” 

Paul felt better than he had before since he 
had been in camp. The Hermit, the HERMIT, 
had approved of his knowledge. Since Paul 
had been living at the cottage he had felt so 
ignorant that he could have cried. But now he 
had found out that some of his knowledge was 
just like the Hermit’s, and the Hermit knew 
everything, and poetry too. “Jimminy crick- 
ets,” he thought, “just watch me when I get 
back to school and see me bone in.” 

They passed the shattered tree and looked 
at everything more closely. There are those 
who have eyes and see not, the Hermit said. 
It is only when one sees what is back of what 
he sees that he really knows what he looks at. 
Look for causes, said the Hermit. 

But no pigs. 

The Hermit and the boys went on and on. 
Paul was feeling elated and the walk would not 


THROUGH THE WOODS 111 

have seemed long if it had continued around 
the lake and then home, which would have been 
more miles than red pigs could have traveled, 
rooting as they do and jumping up and down 
with their hind legs with a funny chopping 
motion. The party was now a long way from 
the top of Squaw Point, when another oppor- 
tunity for Paul to “ recite’ ’ occurred. 

There was a road, little traveled, which ran 
over and around the high bluff where they now 
were in search of the pigs. There was a path 
by the side of the road and a few feet higher 
up than the roadbed, for this had been cut 
down to lower the grade. The Hermit was in 
the lead and Paul was behind as they went 
single file up the steep path. Far below an 
automobile was heard coming up the road. It 
took a good driver to make the ascent and to 
judge by the sound the driver was not the most 
experienced. It was a heavy car and as it was 
passing, Paul saw that it was the same make 
as the one his father drove, which was going 
to be brought down later in the season. 


112 SQUAW POINT 

As the car came along Paul was figuring 
what he would do if he were running his 
father’s car up that road and anything should 
happen. He had run the car many times, but 
usually over level roads. He soon had a chance 
to apply his ideas. 

The driver was a young woman, slender, 
richly dressed, with a bad complexion, and ex- 
citable. She appeared worried as the car 
labored by Paul, who could tell that it was run- 
ning in middle gear. J ust beyond was another 
of the several sharp grades in the bluff road; 
when part way up this grade the young woman 
tried to shift gears and the engine stopped. 
Paul read every sound and knew just what was 
happening. The girl tried to put on the 
brakes, but the car began to back and she 
screamed and turned her head toward Paul, 
who was now abreast of the automobile. He 
saw something had to be done and done quickly 
and swung himself down from the path to the 
running board and into the driving compart- 
ment. He pulled the emergency brake, but 


THROUGH THE WOODS 113 

something was wrong and the car gained mo- 
mentum backward, with three women and a 
child on the rear seat. Something came into 
Paul’s mind that he had been dreaming he 
would do if his father’s car should get beyond 
control on that road, and he instantly put the 
plan into effect. He took the wheel and held 
the car to the road as it passed down the first 
sharp descent and moved over a few feet of 
rather level road and again began to gain speed 
upon reaching the second steep place in the 
downward passage. 

The passengers on the rear seat leaned 
sharply forward as the car yielded and began 
to go backward, as if they might by taking this 
position hold it where it was. The lake 
gleamed through the fringe of trees at that 
point in the road and the prospect of going 
over the roof-like slope which lay to one side 
of the road and plunging into the lake was not 
such as to make the outlook a pleasant one. 
The young woman, from whose hands Paul had 
taken the wheel, was snatching at the brake 


114 SQUAW POINT 

lever, but was so over-wrought that her efforts 
would have amounted to but little, even if the 
brakes had been working properly. Far up 
the path Ben and the Hermit saw the car disap- 
pear around the curve at the second declivity 
and waited, aghast, to hear the final crash. 

But no crash came. Paul held the car to the 
road and while the frightened women were 
awaiting their doom, he was, not headed for, 
but back-ended for, a bed of sand by the road, 
which he had in his mind’s eye distinctly and 
which he now saw near. The car drove into 
the sand and came to a dead stop. The women 
gasped gratitude and Ben and the Hermit ap- 
peared on the scene. 

“You have saved our lives,” exclaimed one 
of the women, an elderly person, who took 
off her glasses to wipe them and her eyes 
too. 

“Father has a car just like this,” replied 
Paul, blushing. 

“It was the emergency brake that wouldn’t 
hold,” declared the girl who drove the car. 


THROUGH THE WOODS 115 

“ Probably has oil on it,” said Paul. “ Maybe 
you put too much oil into the differential.” 

“How could you keep the road?” asked 
another occupant of the car, a woman with red- 
dish hair, large hazel eyes, a pale complexion, 
a white silk shirtwaist and a baby. 

“I left the gears in mesh,” said Paul, ‘ 4 that 
held the car back a little, and then I used the 
foot brake too. I thought I could land the car 
in the sand. I’ve practised backing at home. 
The garage is a hundred yards from the street 
and I back out just for practice. I know this 
car from A to Z.” 

Ben and the Hermit had stood near and were 
too proud for words, especially Ben. The Her- 
mit could probably have done just as well for 
the ladies, but in a different way, for his car 
was not like theirs and he might not have 
known just how to aim at a sand bank, but then 
he would have rescued them somehow or other, 
so Ben thought. But for Paul to be so heady 
was wonderful. 

The ladies finished gasping and arranged 


116 SQUAW POINT 

their hair and then the question was how to get 
the car out of the sand. Paul knew the answer 
to that too. He found a spade in the car and 
dug out from under the wheels and then poured 
water on the sand. Wet sand and dry sand 
are two different things, Paul explained. Even 
Ben did not know that, not the way Paul did. 
Paul took the wheel and the car gave a boost 
to itself, with the Hermit and Ben pushing, and 
out she popped and was back on the road. 

The women all insisted that Paul should 
drive the car over the bluff road. While Ben 
and the Hermit were waiting for him to come 
back, Ben said that he wished he knew as much 
about cars as Paul did. 

“I never dreamed he knew all that about 
cars,” said Ben. 

“ That’s because you never saw him around a 
car,” replied the Hermit. “If you know about 
cars and you are not where they are your 
knowledge does not show up, not unless you 
talk about yourself a good deal, and that would 
not be modest.” 


THROUGH THE WOODS 


117 


4 4 Do you think his going to school helped 
much?” inquired Ben. 

“He’s learned his lessons pretty well,” re- 
plied the Hermit. “I could tell that from his 
knowing about my lightning protection. I 
have learned much outside of schools, but I 
wouldn’t part with what I learned at the uni- 
versity.” 

“Did you go to a university?” asked Ben in 
great surprise. 

“In Scotland,” said the Hermit. “Edin- 
burgh. ’ ’ 

“I should think us boys would make you 
tired,” said Ben. 

“Who knows but Ben Long will be a great 
man ? ’ ’ replied the Hermit. 4 ‘ A great inventor, 
builder, poet?” 

“Not poet,” said Ben. “But Jerusalem 
jinks, I’ll be somebody or bust.” 

After Paul returned the three went on again 
through the woods. The Hermit carried an ax 
and would occasionally knock over a powdery 
old stump and say how long ago he thought the 


118 SQUAW POINT 

tree stood. He pointed out trees that had 
scars on one side extending several feet up- 
ward from the ground. The scars were made, 
he explained, by fire; they told of fires that 
had run through the woods years and years 
before. There were no scars on the trees that 
stood higher up on the bluffs and the Hermit 
said that the forest fires of long ago could not 
climb up there. The grass was not plentiful 
enough or humus was lacking, so the fires 
burned out on the flats. 

Paul picked up a green pine cone with its 
petty drops of gum, from the new crop of cones 
in the topmost branches, hanging in a way to 
remind one of bunches of bananas. Then they 
found spruce cones, shining in the very tops of 
the spruce trees and looking as if turned out 
of brown wood and varnished, much smaller 
than the white pine cones. They saw chip- 
munks pulling pine cones apart and eating 
something that appeared to taste pretty good. 
There were chokecherry and pin cherry trees 
even among the tall trees of the forest, though 


THROUGH THE WOODS 119 

these cherries are rarely found except in open 
places and by the roadsides. 

Duck Lake, lying near the big lake, but not 
connected with it now, was on the way back to 
the Hermit’s, for they had given up the pigs 
for that day. Once upon a time Duck Lake was 
connected with the big lake and once upon a 
time Squaw Point may have been an island. 
But now Duck Lake is shriveled into a reedy 
pond where pickerel and bass may be caught 
any day and where ducks alight in numbers 
varying with the imagination of the beholder, 
but in great numbers truly. The Hermit said 
he might plant celery on his side of Duck 
Lake. 

Paul asked the Hermit what time he liked 
best in the woods. The Hermit never answered 
that question, not the way it was asked. But 
after a long silence he spoke of an August 
night, with a full moon. The spruces, motion- 
less, with their peaked tops, looked like 
cathedral spires and the great elm on Squaw 
Point, with its proud upward sweep of mighty 


120 SQUAW POINT 

limbs, was like Gothic arches. Vapor would 
form on the still lake, to move and vanish at 
dawn. Where the evergreens were, as on the 
sandy prairie below the Point, there would be 
vast uplifted aisles showing in the shining 
grayness, and these aisles would be filled with 
a light like a vaporous silver and the magic 
silence of the lustrous hours of full moonlight 
would thrill like sweet but faint music. Spec- 
tral brightness mixed with night possessed the 
August pines and spruces and far tamaracks 
and birches with their creamy bark, and soft- 
ened and refined the woods till one might fancy 
the whole harsh world had passed away and a 
celestial world had come in its place. 

The Hermit went on, talking so, and the boys 
listened and forgot all about the pigs. 

They reached the Hermit’s. 

4 ‘ Sorry we couldn’t help you to find the 
pigs,” said Paul. 

4 ‘I’ll look for them when I’m after the cows 
to-night,” volunteered Ben. 

The boys went around the corner of the cot- 


THROUGH THE WOODS 121 

tage and ran into tlie pigs. They had come 
home of themselves. 

“ There’s no place like home,” observed the 
Hermit, laughing. 


VII 

THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 

Paul’s mother, Aunt Dorothy and the children 
had to be away from the cottage for at least a 
week, being called back to the city, where Mr. 
Parker was. Paul wanted to stay at the cot- 
tage and it was finally decided that Paul and 
Ben might live at the cottage until the family 
returned. They were to keep house and get 
their own meals. The return of the family to 
the city was unexpected, so the boys found 
themselves upon their resources from the first. 
Mrs. Parker cautioned Paul about the lake and 
had time to say little else before leaving. 

The boys stood in front of the cottage as 
Mrs. Parker and the others left for the station; 
they waved their hands and felt they were sure 
to have a fine time by themselves. There was 


122 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 123 
a gone feeling in Paul when his mother was out 
of sight, but on the whole spirits were high. 
The forenoon passed almost before they knew 
it, but the afternoon was much longer. They 
were beginning to think about what they would 
have for supper when Bill Olson came into 
view. Bill was looking about with a consider- 
able swing of his long neck and large head and 
saw the boys. He stopped his horse, which in- 
stantly swung toward the grass of the road- 
side and fell to devouring it, the hame collar in 
the meantime rising and falling like a log on 
the lake under a west wind. 

“Family homer’ inquired Bill. 

“All gone away,” replied Paul. 

“Pretty lonesome, aren’t you?” Bill asked. 

“Not so very,” answered Paul. “They’re 
coming back again.” 

“Have a good time,” urged Bill, smiling and 
showing where teeth were lacking midway back 
on the jaw. * 

Bill had got out of the wagon and was spying 
and looking along the ground and among the 


124 SQUAW POINT 

bushes and trees, as was his wont. He always 
gave the impression of intense interest in 
things out of doors. If he stood beside a tree 
he would try its bark with his hands. He said 
that he liked the feel of bark, especially the 
bark of a small oak tree, one just about large 
enough for him to close his hand around. Then 
too he would go along partly bent over, spying 
the ground as if tracking a small animal whose 
tracks were faint, or as if looking for four-leaf 
clovers or trying to find the first specimens of 
the season of something or other, like straw- 
berries. This time he saw a flat stone in the 
sand and upon it a garter snake coiled up. Bill 
picked up the snake, wriggling and darting out 
its little red tongue, which looked like a flexible 
needle. 

“Won’t it bite you!” asked Paul, much 
startled. 

“Perfectly harmless variety,” answered Bill, 
smiling a wide-mouthed smile. “See how big 
his tummy is,” he added. “He’s probably swab 
lowed a toad.” 




























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THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 125 

“Just the same, I shouldn't want to handle 
him," said Paul. 

At this Bill took off his hat, put the snake into 
it, and returned the hat to his head with a 
skillful move. Bill's head was bald too, like a 
peeled basswood limb. Bill laughed as the boys 
looked surprised and edged away from him. 

“Keeps my head cool," remarked Bill joy- 
ously. ‘ ‘ Snakes are cold-blooded and they sure 
are fine for keeping your brains cool." 

Bill strolled up toward the cottage, snake in 
his hat. The boys came along. Ben said it was 
nothing to pick up a snake; anybody could do 
that. 

“When are the folks coming back!" asked 
Bill. 

“In about a week," said Paul. “Maybe less 
than a week." 

“There’s a hat hanging in that tree," re- 
marked Bill. “Looks like a woman's. Better 
take your mother's hat in, Paul, she might 
want it." 

“That's Aunt Dorothy's hat," said Paul. 


126 SQUAW POINT 

“Then she’s coming back too,” deduced Bill. 

“Better take good care of it,” added Bill. 
“Womenfolks appreciate doing a thing like 
that for them. Keep the yard picked up too, 
neat and nice. They will like that when they 
all get back, your Aunt Dorothy and all. Throw 
the slops away from the door and get up a good 
supply of wood so they can go to cooking when 
they come in.” 

Bill wandered about the cottage and looked 
everything over. Finally he came around to the 
pump. 

“If that pump should give you any trouble,” 
said Bill, with an almost proprietary interest in 
this convenience, “just run a piece of baling 
wire round this here projection and fetch it 
under here. That type of pump will sometimes 
come apart, particularly if you pump unsteady. 
Better wire it for safety.” 

Bill worked the pump handle and bent over 
to put his mouth to the spout for a drink. He 
was steadying his lips at the pump spout when 
he pushed his hat back a trifle from his fore- 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 127 
head. This opened a passage between Bill’s 
bald head and the hatband at the rear. The 
snake, which Bill had quite forgotten, saw its 
opportunity and shot out of its prison, diving 
into Bill’s neckband and going out of sight 
down Bill’s back inside his shirt. 

“Suffering Moses!” Bill shrieked. “What 
was that?” 

“Just the snake,” said Ben, and both boys 
laughed till they got out of breath from laugh- 
ing and became inaudible, and then laughed 
loud again. 

“So it was,” said Bill, joining in the laughter. 
“I wasn’t expecting him down my spine. But 
he’s gone now,” he added as the garter snake 
glided under the cottage. 

“Take good care of yourselves, boys,” said 
Bill, as he climbed into his wagon and began to 
gather in the slack of the reins which would 
eventually bring up the grazing horse’s head. 
“If you want anything you call on me. And 
then you can tell the family that Bill Olson was 
a good friend.” 


128 SQUAW POINT 

“I’d like to know one thing now/’ said Paul. 
“That’s how to get rid of that snake under the 
cottage. ’ ’ 

“Like as not you’ll step on it with your hare 
feet when you’re up in the night and then you 
can kill it if you want to. But they’re great 
for keeping your brains cool,” said Bill, who 
drove off in fine humor. 

For supper the boys had bread and boiled 
eggs. There were no dishes to wash, as they 
used pieces of a cardboard shoe box for plates 
and each man was to keep his own knife, fork 
and spoon, which could be wiped off. In the 
morning they had bacon. They left the bacon 
fat in the frying pan to use for frying fish. 
They decided to use up all the bacon before 
frying any fish. If they should fry fish and 
then want to fry bacon they would have to wash 
the frying pan ; otherwise the pan would make 
the bacon taste fishy. But first use up the 
bacon and let the bacon fat pile up in the 
frying pan and then they could fry fish to their 
heart’s content. The pan would always be 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 129 

greased and ready and as for its tasting of fish, 
that was what they expected when they ate fish. 
The boys had trouble with the frying pan soon 
after. Things burned in it. 

1 ‘Maybe that’s the reason why Mother 
washes the frying pan, because things burn if 
it isn’t washed,” remarked Paul. 

‘ 4 They wash the frying-pan at our house 
too,” observed Ben. “I always thought it was 
because women are fussy. Maybe you have to 
wash a frying pan.” 

‘ ‘We ’ll give it a washing once in a while,” 
conceded Paul. 

“We ought to tidy up here,” thought Paul 
one evening after a day out of doors. 

“What can we do?” asked Ben, who was will- 
ing to help. 

“My idea would be to get the millers out,” 
said Paul. “They’re alive and the cots and 
dishes are not. Let ’s make a raid on the millers 
and get their eggs out too.” 

Ben rolled up a newspaper and began bat- 
ting the millers that were crawling about inside 


ISO SQUAW POINT 

the porch screen. The cottage had a vast 
porch, screened, and millers got in where the 
rafters joined with the siding. Ben went about 
killing millers and herding them to the screen 
door and then shooing them outside. He would 
catch them by the wings and go outside and 
hurl them down upon the porch step, either 
killing them or stunning them so there “was 
no fun in it,” he said. He struck savagely at 
the millers upon the screening. 

Paul went about with the fire shovel, looking 
for miller’s eggs, of which there were not a 
few. When he found a collection of these beau- 
tifully arranged but noisome and tough eggs, 
he would smash them with the edge of the 
shovel, which he drew across the deposit with 
vindictive glee. In the meantime the sound of 
Ben’s thumping the survivors told what he was 
doing. 

“Most done,” shouted Ben. 

“But look at the screening,” was Paul’s 
comment. 

Ben had been so infatuated with hammering 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 131 
the millers that he had not noticed that he was 
bulging the screening outward or pushing it off 
with nearly every blow. 

“What will they say?” Ben asked in con- 
sternation. 

“I guess they will say that some one will 
have to pound the millers against the screening 
from the outside and drive it back into place,” 
Paul remarked. 

“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Ben. “We’ll 
go at the screening the first thing in the morn- 
ing and fix it all up again.” 

“You were thinking of killing the millers and 
forgot about the screening,” said Paul. 

“Just the way Bill Olson forgot about the 
snake when he went to get a drink,” agreed 
Ben ruefully. 

For breakfast the supply of prepared break- 
fast foods proved useful. There was condensed 
milk, which the boys did not like so very well, 
but the other kind of milk could not be kept in 
a tin can that required no washing. They read 
the directions on the can and followed them to 


132 SQUAW POINT 

the letter, diluting the milk with an equal 

amount of water. 

“How long do you suppose a can of this milk 
would keep?” asked Ben. 

“Forever,” said Paul. 

Paul would get the breakfast food and the 
condensed milk on the table while Ben would 
go out to the tub for such dishes as experience 
had shown were indispensable, like saucers. At 
night they would put to soak any dishes that 
had accumulated during the day and before 
breakfast Ben would fish them out of the water 
and dry them by swinging them, thus saving 
the use of a towel. 

One of the articles of diet was raisins. Paul 
had read that Enos Mills, or Judge Lindsey, 
could live for days on raisins. He said they 
were a perfect food, containing everything the 
human body needs. 

“Why haven’t other people found that out?” 
Ben desired to know. 

“It would save a lot of dishwashing,” said 
Paul. 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 133 

“ There’s probably a trust that wants to keep 
on selling dishes and so only a few people have 
learned about raisins,” thought Ben. “ Uncle 
Erickson takes a paper that keeps him mad all 
the time about the trusts.” 

While Ben would be putting the dishes to 
soak Paul would do the sweeping. All the 
crumbs he swept out of the door. These at- 
tracted flies, which would darken the screen and 
come through the door whenever opened. The 
boys tried to outwit the flies by not having any 
crumbs on the floor. This they accomplished by 
holding their heads well over the table when 
they ate. Whatever crumbs fell went on the table 
and could be thrown directly into the stove. 

“Funny we did not think of this way of eat- 
ing before,” said Ben. 

“Works all right now, while we are alone,” 
Paul replied. 

The boys went fishing regularly and ate fish 
until they never wanted to see another on the 
table. Then they gave away what they caught, 
taking a string up to Bill Olson. 


134* SQUAW POINT 

“I suppose Bill would prefer eels,” thought 
Paul. “He’s so fond of snakes.” 

“The picks are the next thing to snakes,” 
said Ben, “and we’re giving him picks.” 

After becoming cloyed with fish-eating the 
boys turned more largely to a vegetable diet, 
Uncle Erickson’s garden furnishing a few 
things, but there was a supply of dried logan- 
berries and dried peaches in the cottage. These 
they soaked up and put sugar on. They 
thought these might be better cooked, but that 
would require more housework, pans and ket- 
tles and building a fire and the rest, so why not 
eat them uncooked? They did. After a few 
meals with dried fruits the boys thought fresh 
fruits would be better and gathered berries and 
wild plums, but the latter were too green yet. 

The boys kept the cottage in fine shape by 
keeping out of it most of the time. They kept 
the windows shut and everything was left un- 
disturbed as much as possible. Paul had a 
way of sweeping that was an improvement, at 
least it was different from the way his mother 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 135 
and Aunt Dorothy swept. He would wait for a 
wind and then he would open all the doors and 
windows ; by the boys ’ helping along the bigger 
pieces of stuff on the floor the wind "would 
sweep off much of the accumulation. A south 
wind w r as no good for sweeping, as the dust 
and litter blew under the cots in the “dormi- 
tory,” which was the end of the porch used for 
outdoor sleeping, containing the cots of the 
whole family. There came a sort of ancient 
odor about the cottage, which appeared odd con- 
sidering how much shut up the cottage was and 
how clean it was kept. It began to smell like 
Bill Olson ’s house, which Bill kept closed 
while he was in the fields or away from home. 
When the boys took the fish up to Bill’s they 
noticed the close smell, as if the rag carpet 
had never been taken out and beaten or per- 
haps not swept, for it looked even and packed 
with a kind of filling that was not made when 
the carpet was. When you put your elbow on 
the table at Bill’s and took it away there would 
be a track left in the dust. The cottage began 


136 SQUAW POINT 

to have much the same odor as Bill Olson’s 
bachelor house and the boys agreed that a 
house would get close if no one stayed at home 
regularly. Bill Olson had a violin and the cot- 
tage smelled like the case when Bill showed 
the violin to the boys — old and musty-like. 

The food was not exactly what the boys were 
used to and they had bad dreams. Ben dreamed 
an animal dream. He was out in the forest, in 
his dream. There was a great high cliff with 
a slide. At the bottom of the slide stood an 
immense lion, whose jaws opened halfway 
back to his tail. Ben was right beside the lion 
and scared stiff. Every minute some kind of 
animal would come down the slide. It would 
claw and claw at the slippery surface but come 
faster and faster and go plump into the lion’s 
jaws. The lion would brace himself for the 
next animal and swallow him the same way. 
All kinds of animals kept coming and between 
swallows the lion would nudge Ben with his 
nose and say, “ You ’re next.” But the animals 
kept coming and being swallowed, — rabbits, 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 137 
mice, rats, dogs, raccoons, horses, buffaloes. 
The supply kept up, though once in a while 
some animal would stick to the slide for a while 
and the lion would glare at Ben. Ben jumped 
every time the lion’s nose nudged him and he 
tried to get away, but he could not make his 
feet go. The lion was getting tired of waiting 
for the animals, which were coming a little too 
slow for him, and he turned upon Ben and said 
he would eat Ben. At this Ben jumped and 
tried to get away. Just then Paul asked Ben 
what he was trying to do — was something the 
matter with him? Ben said he had been dream- 
ing; he said he must have eaten something. 
Paul said his mouth did not taste right and 
thought they ought to do more cooking. 

Paul and Ben believed it would be better if 
they could do the cooking out of doors. This 
would save sweeping up and it would be more 
fun, more like camping. They hung a kettle 
on a pole, which vras fixed to two stakes driven 
into the ground. They used a green pole, so 
it would not catch fire. They wired the kettle 


138 SQUAW POINT 

to the green pole. As the prepared breakfast 
foods had been used up, having been on the 
table at every meal, the boys thought they 
would cook some breakfast food and have it 
cold the rest of the day. 

There were several kinds of uncooked foods 
in the cottage and the boys could not agree 
upon any one kind. They finally put some of 
each kind into the kettle and cooked the com- 
bination. If every kind was good to eat why 
would not all be good if cooked together? 

Keeping up the fire required much wood, but 
it was a pleasure to get it. The boys ranged 
about looking for pieces that would make the 
fire burn well. There was a space between the 
edge of the woods and where the kettle was 
and the boys thought out a way to make their 
work easier. Instead of dragging the wood to 
the kettle they would have a conveyor. 

Using a wire clothesline they made an over- 
head track for a pulley to run upon. Ben bor- 
rowed a dog chain from Uncle Erickson’s 
anchor for a tackle to connect with the pulley 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 139 
and support the load of fuel. At first the boys 
relied upon the overhead track to hold up only 
one end of a log, but later they perfected the 
carrier so that they could load a wire basket 
with fuel and send it to the kettle with little 
effort. When the invention was completed the 
boys liked to use it so well that they would 
keep a fire going and just boil water. Bill 
Olson saw the smoke that kept rolling up from 
near the cottage and came around to see what 
was up. 

“I vum,” he said admiringly. “That is sure 
some trolley. But be careful, boys; don’t let 
the sparks set the woods afire.” 

Word had come that the family would be 
back “tomorrow.” This set the boys to work 
making ready. They wanted the place to look 
as well or better than when Mrs. Parker took 
the train. They made up the cots they had 
been sleeping in, which were all the cots, for 
the boys had slept around. They swept the 
whole cottage floor with a broom and pulled 
the window shades even. 


140 SQUAW POINT 

Mrs. Parker, who was an affectionate mother, 
rather thin and with glasses, was happy to see 
Paul, and she looked w T armly at Ben, who be- 
gan to edge toward home as the Parkers came. 
The boys followed Mrs. Parker as she went on 
a swift tour of inspection while the rest of the 
family, including Mr. Parker, were unloading 
packages from the automobile in which they 
came. 

“Why, Paul, the towels, ” exclaimed Mrs. 
Parker. 

“What’s wrong with them, Mother?” asked 
Paul. “They are just as you left them. We 
haven’t used any others.” 

“It is just as well to throw a soiled towel to 
the wash and hang up a clean one,” explained 
Mrs. Parker. 

“How nicely you have made up the cots,” 
Mrs. Parker exclaimed. “They look as if they 
had not been slept in. You must have got up 
bright and early to do up the housework.” 

“Not so very,” replied Paul. “We made up 
the cots yesterday.” 


THE BOYS IN THE COTTAGE 141 

“Didn’t you use cots last night?” asked Mrs. 
Parker. 

“No,” answered Paul. “We slept on the 
floor.” 

Mrs. Parker went near the outdoor kettle. 

“What in the world is this?” she asked. 

“Breakfast food,” said Paul. 

A little later Mrs. Parker wanted to hang 
something out on the clothesline and went to 
where it used to be. 

“Paul,” she called, “what has become of the 
clothesline?” 

“It’s there,” answered Paul. 

“I don’t see it,” said his mother, who had 
not detected the overhead carrier. 

“It’s there,” repeated Paul, followed about 
by Ben. “It’s there; only we’re using it for 
a carrier.” 

Mrs. Parker looked at the wire contrivance 
and called Mr. Parker. 

“What shall I do for a clothesline?” she 
asked. 

“Hang the clothes on the line where it is,” 


142 SQUAW POINT 

proposed Paul. “We won’t need it for break- 
fast food all tbe time.” 

Mr. Parker said the idea looked reasonable 
enough to him. 


vm 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 

Mr. Parker wished to learn how to swim in 
fresh water. Not that he was much of a 
swimmer in water that was not fresh. He was 
not an ocean swimmer nor a fresh water 
swimmer, but he had swum in Salt Lake at 
Salt Lake City, Utah, where anybody, even a 
baby, can swim, for it is impossible for any one 
to sink in Salt Lake. People go in and bob 
about on the surface, being scarcely able to go 
under far enough to hide their nakedness in 
a bathing suit. Mr. Parker had managed to 
swim in Salt Lake, but nowhere else. He had 
been brought up in Iowa and had not been very 
well as a boy, either of which reasons might 
account for inability to swim. He said he was 
ashamed that he had never learned, but if peo- 
ple could learn to dance after forty, why 


143 


144 SQUAW POINT 

shouldn’t he learn to swim? Mr. Parker was 
a plump man, with fat cheeks, and small even 
teeth colored with cigars, and a sense of 
humor. He had a tine sense of humor and 
would tell stories and laugh heartily at them — 
laugh to start off the others. He was always 
trying to cheer up Mrs. Parker, who, he seemed 
to think, was a trifle too serious and even nerv- 
ous. He drove a big car and had expensive 
cigars and yet would tell of having to borrow 
money. He was rich and yet he wasn’t. He 
had just two weeks in which to learn to swim. 
They were going to put a swimming tank in 
the new Masonic temple in his town and he had 
to know how to swim. That was one thing he 
wanted to accomplish on his vacation, and he 
could not begin too soon. He had brought 
bathing suits for the entire family and had his 
where he could lay his hands on it. “Live or 
die, survive or perish, sink or SWIM,” he 
said was his sentiments. 

“Can you swim?” Mr. Parker asked Ben 
with playful ferocity. 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 145 

“ Paddle around a little in the water,” an- 
swered Ben. 

4 6 Come off,” said Mr. Parker. “They say 
you can swim like a duck and dive like a king- 
fisher. Can you teach me?” 

Ben said he could teach people but he was 
not sure he could teach a man who was so big. 

“ Jehoshaphat !” said Mr. Parker, laughing so 
his lower shirt buttons jiggled. “The strokes 
must be all the same for any and everybody. 
You just give me the idea; show me how you 
take the water and get off and how you keep 
going and I will do the rest. I will teach my 
wife too.” 

Ben had already shown Paul about swim- 
ming, using what he called the “frog steam- 
boat” method. Ben showed Paul how to lower 
himself into the water up to his neck and then 
shoot off on the surface of the water by making 
use of the spring in his knees. By beginning 
his arm strokes while his body was shooting 
forward from the force of knee action Paul 
found it possible to keep going for several 


146 SQUAW POINT 

strokes, and Ben assured liim that practice was 
all he needed to become a good swimmer. Ben 
of course required no frog steamboat method 
to get under way; he would fall into the water 
with a crash, face downwards, sideways, back- 
wards, or turn a somersault from a boat or the 
diving tower, which was originally a grind- 
stone frame, but now, with additions built upon 
it, was a structure about five feet high used by 
Ben for performing aquatic feats in the lake. 
Ben liked to stand on top of his tower and wave 
to the Hermit as the latter passed at a distance 
in his sailboat, consisting of his rowboat with 
a pirate-like sail of khaki cut square and rigged 
to the bow. Ben’s tower somewhat resembled 
an oil derrick. Equipped with his tower, 
Uncle Erickson’s boat and his bathing suit 
Ben was almost a marine animal. 

Ben had a bathing suit with him most of the 
time, as it consisted of his overalls. All he had 
to do to get ready for the water was to take 
off his shirt and throw down his hat. When 
any of the boys from the farms back from the 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 147 
lake came along and wanted to go in swimming 
Ben would be in the water before they had 
finished a sentence. Mr. Parker’s talk about 
having Ben teach him how to swim had made 
Ben think twice about a bathing suit, and he 
decided that he would try to be ready with the 
pair of overalls that had the built-on sus- 
penders. The other pair had to be buttoned 
so tight around the waist to keep them on that 
they stopped the circulation anyhow. 

Shortly after Mr. Parker had spoken about 
learning how to swim Ben loaded the tower 
into Uncle Erickson’s boat and pulled up to 
the Parker beach. He rolled the tower off into 
the lake, dropped the oars, and at once the 
Parker family was attracted by loud sounds 
and splashings from the water. 

“It’s Ben out there,” shouted Paul in glee. 

“No time like the present,” said Mr. Parker, 
laying a cigar on the two-by-four plate under 
the rafters of the porch. Whereupon he took 
his bathing suit and disappeared in the woods. 
Presently he reappeared walking slowly and 


148 SQUAW POINT 

painfully, every little while stopping suddenly 
and jerking up a foot, on account of sharp 
things he stepped on. His fat white calves 
gleamed like a moonrise as he picked his way 
out from the trees and passed in front of the 
cottage toward the lake. 

“Hey, boy, I’m coming,” he shouted to Ben. 

Ben’s answer was a somersault and a swim 
under water, coming up and shaking his head 
to get the water out of his ears. 

“You look like a drownded rat,” called out 
Mr. Parker. 

Ben paused from his feats long enough to 
say, “You can’t swim without getting wet.” 

‘ ‘ Can ’t, eh ? ” observed Mr. Parker as he came 
gingerly up to the water’s edge, balanced him- 
self on his left foot and touched the water with 
the toes of his right. 

“Say, you,” he shouted, “is this water 
warm?” 

“Never gets very warm in this part of Min- 
nesota,” said Ben. “These lakes never get 
what you would call hot.” 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 149 

“What do you do about it?” inquired Mr. 
Parker. 

“Go in anyhow,” counseled Ben. “Get wet 
all over and then you don’t mind it.” 

“How deep is it?” Mr. Parker desired to 
know. 

“It slopes off gradually,” explained Ben. 
‘ ‘ I will tell you when you get near deep water, 
but you won’t; it’s a quarter of a mile, most, 
out to where you’d be over your head.” 

The beach was an ideal one for bathing, 
being sandy and clean, not a stone at the edge 
of the water or under water. The depth of 
the lake increased imperceptibly for a long dis- 
tance, the sandy shore having been beaten by 
the waves for centuries as the lake level low- 
ered and retreated, as it were, from the sloping 
roof of the land. The Parker beach was on 
the eastern side of the lake, where the west 
winds had swept and ground the bottom, mak- 
ing it but a continuation of the level sandy 
flat on which the Parker cottage stood among 
the pines. 


150 SQUAW POINT 

But the water was not exactly hot, nor even 
warm, on the day Mr. Parker chose for begin- 
ning swimming practice. The sun was bright 
and the air was warm, but the water 

Mr. Parker could be heard talking to him- 
self as he forced his white legs out into the 
lake. He was now in halfway up to his 
knees. 

4 ‘Better get wet all over,” said Ben. 

Mr. Parker took up w T ater in his hands and 
applied it to his forehead and spilled a spoon- 
ful upon his chest. 

“Get wet and you won’t notice the water,” 
urged Ben. “Go in all over.” 

Mr. Parker sat down and yelled. The water 
came only to his waist. 

“Stretch out,” suggested Ben. 

Mr. Parker w T ent on his hands and knees and 
inundated the lower part of his chest up to his 
chin and then by effort of will sank himself 
fiercely until he w^as under water, with his 
stomach on the sandy bottom. 

“Good for you,” said Ben. 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 151 

4 ‘What do I do next?” inquired Mr. Parker, 
who was now up and coming, walking and 
splashing out toward deeper water, his back 
appearing in its wetness and breadth something 
like the top of a new automobile in a rain. 

Ben explained the frog steamboat method, 
and Mr. Parker tried it ; he went down all over. 

“I got water in both ears,” expostulated Mr. 
Parker. 

4 4 It runs in,” said Ben. 

Just then Paul appeared on the beach in his 
bathing suit. He walked quickly into the water 
and dove out into it where it was quite shallow, 
wetting himself all over in no time. 

4 4 That’s the way to do it, I guess,” observed 
Mr. Parker. 4 4 Instead of killing yourself by 
inches. Say, I feel all right now; the water’s 
fine.” 

4 4 You will get so you won’t mind going right 
in,” said Ben. 4 4 You won’t stop to think about 
it. Your skin hardens up. It’s like getting 
your ears used to cold weather in the winter. 
The first cold day you think they’ll freeze off 


152 SQUAW POINT 

your head, but after a while they will stand 

anything, if you don’t freeze them. ,, 

Ben gave Mr. Parker further suggestions and 
showed him how a boy swims. He told Mr. 
Parker to make his arms and legs go at the 
same time, that is, to keep them all going. Mr. 
Parker would almost learn how to support 
himself in the water when a cloudy discolora- 
tion of the water would show that he had 
dragged bottom or had resorted to pushing 
himself with a foot. 

“Use your legs,” Ben urged enthusiastically, 
“swing ’em out; kick your feet off. Make 
scissors with them. Do the way the frogs do; 
reach out with your hind legs.” 

Mr. Parker thought that possibly he had to 
displace too much water when he tried to swim; 
his waist-line was large and when he went 
under he said he made the tide rise. Boys have 
almost no stomachs and so the resistance of 
the water is less for them, being like pickerel 
with long narrow bodies. 

“But whales swim,” said Ben. 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 153 

“Then I can,” declared Mr. Parker, disap- 
pointed because he had not learned in one 
lesson. 

Ben showed Mrs. Parker and Dorothy about 
swimming. Mrs. Parker wore a bathing cap 
and looked as if she were going to a party. She 
listened closely to what Ben said, which was 
not much, and especially watched him to see 
how he swam. She was in earnest about learn- 
ing. She had made up her mind. The first 
time she tried she went from a standing posi- 
tion, her head held back gracefully; she looked 
as if she were dismounting from a high wagon, 
with some one ready to take her in his arms 
to prevent her getting smashed on the side- 
walk. She gave a look and shut her eyes, and 
went upon the water that way, and struck bot- 
tom. She seemed surprised when she came up 
with water running down from her nose. She 
was too graceful, if anything, in her take- 
off. 

Ben did not like to say much, but upon being 
urged he suggested that she begin by keeping 


154 SQUAW POINT 

her eyes open. The water wouldn’t bite, he 
said. Mrs. Parker did exactly as she was told 
and learned to keep her eyes open. She did 
not seem to dread cold water half as much as 
Mr. Parker; she seemed more used to suffer- 
ing. She was conscientious about learning to 
swim and went at it as if it were a club paper. 
Probably that was the reason why for a time 
she made such good progress day after day. 
It wasn’t long until she could swim nearly a 
rod. But she stuck at a rod and Ben wondered 
why she could not go farther. She said her 
strength seemed to give out when she had gone 
that far. But Dorothy, Dorothy got so she 
could swim well and sort of walk with her arms 
through the water, laughing all the time. Ben 
worried over the lack of progress shown by 
Mrs. Parker. 

“She swims just about as far on top of the 
water as I do under it,” he thought. Then 
Ben had an idea — women are funny. The next 
time, he raced along ahead of Mrs. Parker and 
watched her expression. It didn’t look natural, 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 155 
and the farther she went the more she looked 
as if she might blow np. 

“Do you breathe ?” Ben asked her. 

“Perhaps I don’t; I hadn’t thought about 
that, ’ ’ she replied. She had not breathed while 
swimming. Then she tried breathing and 
swimming at the same time and could not 
swim. 

Ben told her that she never could swim very 
far unless she could breathe and swim too. 
Finally she learned how to breathe and swim at 
the same time and she was happy. 

Mr. Parker thought his wife was doing 
nobly, and he was too. At first he seemed to 
churn up the water altogether too much. He 
could make his legs go now, which he could 
keep under water usually, but when brought 
too near the surface made the water boil as if 
a geyser had come through. The way the water 
fumed and went into the air when his feet beat 
too near the surface must have frightened the 
fish. He fought the water desperately, too, 
with his arms, and his face showed agony. 


156 SQUAW POINT 

Ben would come swimming near, noiseless and 
with no lost motion, like a sucker under the 
anchored rowboat about seven o’clock in the 
evening, and try to give Mr. Parker the idea 
that the kingdom of heaven is not taken by vio- 
lence. After a while Mr. Parker caught on. 
Then he just saved out the movements that got 
him somewhere and forgot the others. He used 
his arms and legs just enough to keep him going 
and let himself down into the water until it 
wet the fringe of hair above his pink neck. 
Instead of appearing to try to see how much 
foam he could beat up he w r ent quietly and 
pulled with his closed hands on the water, 
reaching out with his arms till his ribs felt it 
and swinging in great movements with his legs 
and feeling the pressure of the water on his 
shin bones. Pretty soon he was asking Ben if 
he knew how far a person could swim — what 
the record was. 

Mr. Parker found a long stick under water 
and breaking it in two in the middle set stakes 
up in the lake fifty yards apart. The stakes 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 157 
stood there while Mr. Parker was away and 
were there when he came back between trips 
later in the season. He became able to swim 
from one stake to the other. That was a proud 
moment. He left up the stakes as a reminder 
of his record. 

Mr. Parker thought it would add to the 
pleasure of the family if they could have a log 
to perform with in the water. Ben and Paul 
found a trunk that would be just the thing. 
It was six feet long and about a foot in 
diameter, poplar, and peeled. The boys ex- 
perimented with the log and discovered anew 
what Ben already knew, that a log is a treach- 
erous thing in the water. A log rolls over in 
the water with surprising ease. 

Mr. Parker was pleased to see the log, when 
he came down, and said he thought the women 
ought to know how to save themselves by 
clinging to objects in case they were forced to 
leave a sinking vessel. 

‘ ‘Wait till I get into my bathing suit and I’ll 
give them all a lesson,” he said joyously. 


158 SQUAW POINT 

Ben and Paul were interested, especially Ben, 
who thought he knew something about how logs 
behave in water. 

Mr. Parker came out in his bathing suit, 
which was now faded considerably, and called 
Mrs. Parker and Dorothy. He got into the 
boat and rowed out beyond the second stake. 
He would now give the exhibition that he had 
promised. 

“This is a sinking steamer,” he called, 
pointing to the boat he was in, “and this is a 
log that comes floating by. I am a passenger 
that can’t swim. So I save myself by getting 
on this log.” 

Mr. Parker then let himself down upon the 
log, sitting astride and holding to the rowboat. 

“The steamer sinks,” he shouted, and gave 
the boat a push toward shore, “and I — 
whoa ” 

He never finished the lecture. As Ben had 
expected, but as no one else had, the log gave 
a quick turn and was instantly bobbing about 
on a troubled sea all by itself. Mr. Parker’s 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 159 
bathing suit and his white legs seemed to be 
going in a circle for a moment and then the 
spray and foam of the water showed where he 
was. He spit out water and shook his head 
and tried to say something, and it was impos- 
sible not to sympathize with him. 

“Who are you?” called out Dorothy, holding 
her sides, while every one else laughed and 
laughed. 

“Did you miss the log?” asked Paul. 

“Say, I’ve learned something about logs,” 
admitted Mr. Parker. “They can buck worse 
than an outlaw cow pony.” 

“The center of gravity was too high,” said 
Paul, “and you rolled over with the log on 
top.” 

“Rolled over, yes,” said Mr. Parker dis- 
gustedly. 

“How would you do that?” Mr. Parker asked 
Ben. 

“It was a great success as it was,” inter- 
rupted Dorothy. “It couldn’t have been fun- 
nier.” 


160 SQUAW POINT 

“ Don’t horn in,” was Mr. Parker’s way of 
settling Dorothy. 

Ben said the way to keep afloat with a log 
was to sink yourself in the water and hold onto 
the log. The log would hold you up but you 
couldn’t ride a log, especially not a large man 
on a small log. 

“I demonstrated that truth,” said Mr. 
Parker. 

Mr. Parker insisted upon going out again to 
try the log. 

“Here, you reptile,” he said, addressing the 
log and leading it out with him toward deep 
water beyond the second stake. “I’ll show you 
I know a log from a life-boat.” 

Mr. Parker was wading out innocent of hav- 
ing an enemy in the world when an automobile 
stopped in front of the cottage. A man from 
the car motioned to Mr. Parker to come to 
shore. Mr. Parker came back, wondering what 
was wanted. 

“You are under arrest,” the man said, show- 
ing a badge. 


BEN GIVES SWIMMING LESSONS 161 
“ What’s that you’re saying ?” asked Mr. 
Parker. “Arrested? What for? Trying to 
commit suicide?” 

“For having out nets,” said the fish warden, 
“against the law. There are the net stakes.” 

“Run along,” said Mr. Parker. “I set those 
stakes for fifty yards. I can swim that far, 
and learned this season.” 

“Then somebody’s been lying about you. 
They told me you were netting fish. ’ ’ 

“It’s a mistake, a cruel mistake,” declared 
Mr. Parker. “I may have sat on a fish or two 
when I went off that log, but that’s the extent 
of it.” 


IX 


A PICNIC SUPPER 

With Mr. Parker at the cottage there was 
something going on all the time and one thing 
that promised much was a picnic supper. Mr. 
Parker had invited Otto Bergh, an insurance 
agent, to come down to the cottage and bring 
his wife and children, and Mrs. Parker had 
relatives who were invited. Ben was to be 
there as a friend of the Parker family, and Ben 
and Paul knew in advance of the two freezers 
of ice cream which was to be a feature of the 
picnic supper. Besides Ben and Paul, who 
were not mere children, fifteen youngsters, 
ranging from nursing bottle to more advanced 
stages of childhood, might have been counted 
on the beach at the height of the activities pre- 
ceding and following the supper. Uncle Erick- 
son furnished the ice and the cream and one 
of the freezers. 


162 


A PICNIC SUPPER 163 

It was the first time Otto Bergh had been at 
this lake and he thought it a fine place. Mr. 
Parker took him around and pointed out things 
to see. Ben and Paul, the only boys of their 
size present, went in and out of groups and part 
of the time went with Mr. Parker and Otto 
Bergh as the former explained the advantages 
of having a cottage at Squaw Point. The 
women were busy getting out the dishes and 
setting the tables and doing things like that 
and the children fell partly in charge of the 
men. Both Mr. Parker and Otto Bergh pre- 
sided at the swing while many of the children 
had their turns at the swing. The swing was a 
noble one, being suspended between two elms 
and having a pendulous movement that carried 
one on and on in a slow way until one could 
see away out over everything. The swing was 
so high that the motion was slow at first but 
when once in full operation it swung so high 
that on the return, Otto Bergh, who was more 
than six feet tall and as slim as a rail, had all 
he could do to get his hands on the seatboard 


164 SQUAW POINT 

for another boost. Only the larger children 
were sent up high in the swing. The little ones 
would be swung gently and for them a short 
board would be used in place of the long board 
that fitted larger people. Otto Bergh was kind- 
ness itself; he gave everybody a swing. Ten 
times was the limit. Every child could be 
swung ten times and then it had to give way 
for the next. Paul told who was next and Otto 
Bergh saw that everything was all right and 
pushed off and kept the swing going. Some of 
the larger of the small children, boys especially, 
would run back and forth under the swing when 
it had some one in it and was in motion. Otto 
Bergh jerked his own boy, who did that once, 
and Paul hit a small boy cousin of his a severe 
clip on the side of the head for scooting under 
when the swing was in motion. Paul batted 
his cousin so hard for cutting up that other 
children of the same size who were not his 
relatives took notice and stopped running 
under. 

When the ten swings were up Otto Bergh had 


A PICNIC SUPPER 165 

to stop the swing and empty out whoever was 
in it, for the swing would have gone forever; 
the old cat did not die very fast in this swing. 
The old cat had to be choked to death, Otto 
Bergh said; so he would run along by the side 
of the swing and slow it down and empty out 
the one in the swing. Some of the hoys thought 
they would be smart, and jumped out when the 
swing was just about to return, but they some- 
times fell on their noses and Otto Bergh for- 
bade their jumping out. The two Bailey girls 
were there; they were relatives or something 
of the Parkers. They were twins and dressed 
exactly alike even to hair ribbons. They were 
thin and when they spoke as loud as they could 
it was not much above a whisper. Otto Bergh 
swung them halfway between the way he swung 
the babies, and the way he swung the boys, 
and they screamed, or squeaked, you might 
say. 

“Fd like to show them something to he 
scared of, * ’ said Ben, disgusted with the Bailey 
twins. 


166 SQUAW POINT 

“I would too,” said Paul. “They always 
act that way.” 

“Come on,” said Ben, “and we’ll do a thing 
or two.” 

“There are too many children around to suit 
me,” said Paul. “Like a kindergarten.” 

“I guess that is the trouble,” said Ben. 
“But we can do something to stir ’em up.” 

When Paul and Ben had kept house at the 
cottage they had rigged up a trick pole, like 
the one Ben had at Uncle Erickson’s. This was 
the strong pole of a small ironwood tree which 
was wired up securely between two pines. 

They began performing on the trick pole. 
Pretty soon the swing was empty and hung idly 
swaying, while all the children, the Bailey girls 
included, were watching the boys at the trick 
pole. Paul performed first, doing such things 
as skinning the cat and hanging by his legs. 
Ben did his best stunts and the children howled 
with delight. Otto Bergh, relieved of his labors 
at the swing, stood by, readjusting his belt and 
wiping the sweat from his brow and explaining 


A PICNIC SUPPER 167 

to Mr. Parker how much better sports shirts 
are than any other kind. He said that since 
he had got to wearing sports shirts he had not 
called for his collars at the laundry for more 
than three months. 

Mr. Parker said he liked sports shirts, only 
he liked them with long sleeves; otherwise 
when he wore a coat the coat sleeves .rasped his 
arms. Otto Bergh said that he was never 
troubled that way. Probably the reason was 
that his arms were only skin and bone while 
Mr. Parker’s arms looked like something that 
could not all be packed in one place. 

“Oh, the boys are drowning!” shrieked one 
of the Bailey twins. 

After Ben and Paul had performed on the 
trick pole they had disappeared. They went 
down to the beach and sat on the sand behind 
a scrub oak tree and discussed what they would 
do next. They decided to go into the water. 

The Bailey twins shrieked and pointed to 
where the boys were, away out in what seemed 
to be dangerously deep water. Uncle Erick- 


168 SQUAW POINT 

son’s boat was out there and was bottom side 
up and the boys seemed to be on the point of 
going down, perhaps for the last time. But 
they did not go down, and then it looked as if 
Paul was just about all gone — drowned — and 
Ben was bringing him in and having a hard 
time of it too. Ben’s head could be seen down 
in the water to his ears and Paul had to be 
supported. It seemed from the shore that Ben 
could never get to shore with Paul, who was 
apparently exhausted. 

The shrieks of the twins, for the other twin 
had joined in, and the excitement on the shore 
attracted the attention of the women, who were 
getting the picnic supper ready. 

“ Where are the men?” asked Mrs. Parker 
in alarm. 

The men were nowhere to be found. 

“Oh, the boys are going to get to shore,” 
squeaked one of the twins. “They are coming. 
Ben is swimming and bringing in Paul.” 

“Aw, he’s walking,” remarked one of the 
onshore small boys. 


A PICNIC SUPPER 169 

* ‘ Squat down or you’ll show above water,’ ’ 
called another. 

Then Ben laughed and Paul stood up. 

‘ ‘ The boys are saved, ’ ’ the twins repeated. 

“My knees ache,” said Ben, “from squatting 
down so long.” 

“How deep was the water out there?” asked 
a boy. 

“Over your head,” said Ben. 

“Honest to goodness?” 

“Yes, if you put your head down,” replied 
Ben. 

The little children thought the big boys were 
wonderful, they were so wet, and went back 
to their play. Just then they were playing 
canning. They were filling empty olive bottles 
with rose hips and lake water, putting in 
enough sand from the beach to fill any spaces. 
Other children were going about decorated 
with necklaces of wild hop vines and still others 
were keeping house under the sun shed that 
had been put on the beach, consisting of four 
poles driven upright into the sand and support- 


170 SQUAW POINT 

in g a roof of rough boards. This structure 
kept the sun off and being open at the sides 
could accommodate any number of children as 
they came and went. 

The Bailey twins had been so excited about 
the “ drowning’ ’ and the rescue that Ben and 
Paul disappeared again and nobody thought 
much of it. Soon the children were running 
to the cottage and calling for their mothers to 
come and see the tall men coming. There were 
two giants coming along the road behind the 
bushes and would soon be close up. The chil- 
dren would run up to the cottage and then run 
back as far as they dared toward the road, all 
the time yelling and screaming with excitement. 
The giants kept on coming though they stopped 
at times and talked in gruff tones to each other. 
The children, the smallest ones, thought the 
giants might be looking for somebody to eat. 
The twins giggled and ran back and forth for 
Short distances. Presently the giants stopped 
in the road before the cottage. 

“This is my brother,’ ’ said one giant, reach- 


A PICNIC SUPPER 171 

ing up and placing his hand on the other giant ’s 
head. 

“ We’re both giants,” said the big brother, 
who had higher stilts than the other. 

“Your legs are too long for your body,” 
called out Otto Bergh’s oldest boy, who had 
sandy hair and brown eyes. 

“It’s the boys,” tee-heed a twin. 

The giants went on and the children ran after 
them and threw things. 

“They aren’t anybody at all,” one child said, 
“just the boys.” 

“What will those boys do next?” one twin 
asked the other and both danced up and down. 

“What else can we do?” asked Paul when 
he and Ben were safe behind the bushes. 

“I’d like some real excitement,” said Ben. 

“The twins wouldn’t faint, anything we 
could do,” thought Paul. 

“If we made them faint the mothers would 
be scared to death at what made the twins faint 
and they might not like it,” said Paul. “And 
there’s the ice cream yet.” 


172 SQUAW POINT 

1 1 Let’s try the pup,” said Ben. 

Mr. Parker had put the pup behind the place 
where he kept his car; he said he didn’t want 
the pup worn out by the children. The pup was 
a collie with a white collar of hair about its 
neck and a stripe down its nose. It was round 
and so plump that its skin seemed about to 
crack and its nose and legs were shorter than 
they would be later. Now it looked like a small 
bear and waddled. Mr. Parker paid a dollar 
for the pup, but said that when he got him to 
town he could show him off and people would 
think the collie had cost twenty or twenty-five 
dollars. The white collar around the pup’s 
neck would make people think it was of pure 
’blood; it was really seven-eighths pure blood. 
Mr. Parker wanted a good watchdog for Mrs. 
Parker and this collie was just the thing, and 
he did not wish to have the children play with 
the pup and wear it out. Mrs. Parker was glad 
to have a watchdog but could not see why Mr. 
Parker should wish to have people think that 
he had paid twenty or twenty-five dollars for 


A PICNIC SUPPER 173 

the pup when it had cost only a dollar. Mr. 
Parker said he could see why, but he did not 
explain. The boys felt sure that while Mr. 
Parker did not wish to have the pup played 
with, as a regular thing, he would not object 
to having the pup used in a pageant or some- 
thing of that nature. 

The boys were gone a long time now and the 
Bailey twins had great curiosity, for they were 
sure the boys would be up to something. At 
times the twins would get excited and go caper- 
ing around in giggles just as if the boys had 
really appeared and were doing something for 
the children to marvel at, and then they would 
calm down again and with the other children 
talk about what the boys could possibly be 
doing. Then all forgot about the boys, for 
ice cream time was drawing near. 

Ben and Paul were out in the woods fixing 
up the pup for his part in the ‘ ‘ pageant. ’ ’ Paul 
had seen a pageant and knew how to get one 
up. The boys thought that a pageant that rep- 
resented an early settler chased by a bear would 


174 SQUAW POINT 

be about the best. The pup would be the bear, 
Paul the old settler and Ben master of cere- 
monies. At first they thought they would have 
the pup go on foot as a bear while it chased 
the old settler, but the pup could not be 
counted on to hold to its part. The pup was 
likely to fall down at a critical point in the 
action, roll over, bite a hind leg with his little 
white teeth and jump up and go reeling oft the 
wrong way. The pup was too light-minded to 
take part in the pageant in any way except 
under strict control. 

“If we trust this pup to chase you he’ll never 
get to where the Bailey twins are,” said Ben. 

“Let’s put him on the express wagon,” sug- 
gested Paul. 

So the boys loaded the pup on the express 
wagon and tied him down so he could not get 
off or fall off, no matter how fast the wagon 
went. They placed a block for his forefeet to 
stand on in order to make the pup seem bigger 
and to give him a fierce and wild appearance. 
Then the boys draped the express wagon with 


A PICNIC SUPPER 175 

wild hop vines. When this was done the wagon 
was not visible and the pup loomed up just that 
much larger and more dangerous. Ben said he 
would roar and bark, for the pup was not old 
enough to do more than whine-talk for its 
mother. When the pup was ready Paul made 
himself look like an early settler by getting into 
a burlap sack with holes cut for his arms and 
smearing his face with the juice of a little plant 
that bore a multitude of minute fruits in red 
clusters. The juice gave PauPs face the ap- 
pearance of having been lacerated or of a 
hemorrhage. The old settler had been attacked 
by the bear and seriously wounded but was 
escaping — that was the idea. Ben would draw 
the express wagon and pup and yell and roar, 
and Paul would shout for help and run as fast 
as he could, staggering on account of loss of 
blood. 

The women at the cottage had made the first 
table ready, which was the one for the children 
to eat at, to be followed later by the second 
table for the grown-ups. The children and the 


176 SQUAW POINT 

Bailey twins were watching developments and 
getting their mouths ready for what was com- 
ing, and were not thinking at all about Ben 
and Paul. In the meantime Ben had the 
pageant all lined up behind a stump and bushes. 
When Ben said go, Paul was to spring out and 
plunge among the people and be scared out of 
his wits, pointing back toward the bear and call- 
ing for help. This would prepare everybody 
for the bear and Ben would come next followed 
by the beast. 

The Bailey twins stood with their backs to 
the deep forest, and the little children were 
centering their attention on the first table when 
Ben punched Paul with a stick and said go. 

Paul burst through the bushes, yelling and 
excited, with what seemed to be blood stream- 
ing from his face. He was so changed that he 
did not look like himself and probably that was 
one of the reasons why the twins were so 
scared; they had just got started on shrieks 
when the bear came into view, riding high and 
swaying as if hungry for settlers. Ben had 


A PICNIC SUPPER 177 

smeared his own face too with the red juice 
and as no one stopped to notice that he was 
drawing the express wagon, or that there was 
a wagon, the pageant was a great success. 
Everybody seemed to think that an animal had 
attacked the boys and cut up their faces. The 
pup leered and swung his heavy and calm 
countenance as the wagon brought him sav- 
agely toward the group of little folks and the 
Bailey twins, and the twins became wild and 
then hysterical. At first they shrieked but 
soon ran out of wind; they froze up in horror 
and then thawed out and fled and ran in 
circles. Ben and Paul were overjoyed when 
they saw the twins succumb, but pretty soon 
they worried because the twins did not act 
natural. Ben ran up to them, leaving the pup 
on the pageant dray, and, not realizing that his 
face was all “blood,” took hold of a twin and 
shouted that it was nothing but a pup. Even 
this did not quiet the twin he caught and Paul 
was having just as hard a time getting the 
other twin to listen to him. They seemed un- 


178 SQUAW POINT 

reasonable and shrieked and looked wild, not 
seeing anything as it was. At last the twins 
got control of themselves and darted toward 
the cottage, diving into the midst of the people 
there, and gasped. 

6 1 Better take the pup back, ’ ’ thought Paul. 

“And well have to clean up; the ice cream is 
coming, ’ ’ remarked Ben. “We better be around 
about now; it melts if you don’t eat it.” 

“We scared the twins, all right,” said Paul. 

“Wonder what they’d do if a real bear 
chased them,” said Ben. “If I was a bear I 
wouldn’t eat the twins if I could. One would 
taste just like the other,” he added. 

The children and boys had two dishes of ice 
cream apiece and things to eat with it. After 
that some of the children asked for more, but 
this was not polite, but they were given a little ; 
others just looked as if they wanted more and 
said nothing ; these were given more. Ben and 
Paul, being large boys, had two helpings and 
then two more, and made the fourth one last 
as long as possible. 


A PICNIC SUPPER 179 

The older people came for the second table. 
Mr. Parker said that he hoped to have a big 
fish to bake but he hadn’t got around to catch 
it yet ; so Mrs. Parker had made the most won- 
derful salad and had sandwiches and coffee. 
There was nearly everything from a garden in 
the salad, — cucumbers, peas, lettuce, carrots 
and celery and more. 

Bill Olson came driving by when the party 
was nearly to the ice cream. Otto Bergh, being 
an insurance agent, spoke to Bill and Bill’s 
horse stopped at once and went to grazing. 

“What are you doing, feeding your face!” 
was Bill’s remark, addressed to Otto Bergh but 
meant for the company to hear. 

“Give Bill some ice cream,” said Paul; “he’s 
a good scout.” 

Bill was delighted to be asked in. He sat on 
the porch with his back to the cottage wall, 
while Otto Bergh sat on the outer side of the 
porch with his back to the lake. Bill was 
happy, as any one would have been* with such 
ice cream as Mrs. Parker could make. He 


180 SQUAW POINT 

promised to take out Mr. Parker in a boat and 
show him exactly where to cast in for a fish 
big enough to bake for a large family. 

4 ‘You might have to bake him one end at a 
time,” gaily predicted Bill, speaking of the fish 
that might be caught, “bake him one end at a 
time and let the other end rest on a chair.” 

Mr. Parker said he had never caught a fish 
that looked too big to him; if he caught an 
extra size one he would have it photographed 
and take the photo back to town with him and 
have it framed. 

Bill affected to be amazed at the way Otto 
Bergh “put away” ice cream. Every little 
while Bill would say that his view of the lake 
was being shut off, hinting that Otto Bergh 
was swelling out farther and farther. Every- 
body laughed at the joke the first time or two, 
so Bill kept it going. If Otto Bergh ate more 
than Bill Olson he deserved mention. 

It was growing late in the afternoon and the 
smallest children were giving some trouble, 
being fussy. Otto Bergh had to carry the 


A PICNIC SUPPER 181 

Bergli baby around and keep her from howling. 
Some of the children had eaten too much ice 
cream. 

“They ’ll all be going home now,” Paul re- 
marked to Ben. 

“They’ll say good-by and stand around,” 
thought Ben. 

“I guess I’ll skip now,” said Ben. “This is 
a good time for me to make my getaway.” 

“Let’s go out in the woods,” said Paul. 
“Talking is what gets me.” 

“Anyhow we can be bailing out Uncle Erick- 
son’s boat and just have to wave from the 
lake,” proposed Ben. 


X 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 

The Parker cottage was a half mile from a 
neighbor's, but people were passing frequently, 
so the location did not seem lonely, not in the 
daytime anyhow; but nights it was a trifle dif- 
ferent. When the shadows of evening fell it 
seemed more likely that the woods behind the 
cottage might conceal wild animals or bad men. 
If one were looking for things he could see 
shapes which closely resembled living creatures 
in the bushes and trees by which the cottage 
was surrounded. The woods looked so black 
at night, especially when the moon rose late or 
was not seen at all. On moonless nights there 
was a tendency for the family to draw inside 
the cottage and stay there, when Mr. Parker 
was away. When he was there his jovial talk 
and loud laughter made the woods seem differ- 
ent and free from danger. 


182 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE il83 
When Mr. Parker went away the last time 
he told Paul to be the man about the house. If 
anything should happen that threatened danger 
to the family he said he was sure Paul would 
be on the job. Paul, who had come to have a 
keener eye and more independence since he first 
met Ben Long, assured his father that the cot- 
tage would be defended. Mrs. Parker had wor- 
ried more after being at the cottage for several 
weeks than at first, for people told her the 
worst things that ever had happened in that 
region or ever could happen. Women of the 
neighborhood would bring in tales that made 
Mrs. Parker regret that all the sleeping accom- 
modations were on the porch and that Paul was 
the only man there with Mr. Parker away. 
Paul did not know what he would do in case 
of emergency, for he had no idea of what the 
emergency might be, but he said he thought he 
could do what there was to do, but so far as he 
knew there was nothing for him to do, not yet. 

If the Parkers had known about the Hern 
gang before building a cottage at Squaw Point 


184 SQUAW POINT 

they would probably have built a cottage many 
miles away or even perhaps have given up the 
idea of living in the woods or country. But 
they had not heard of the Hern gang and so 
went gaily ahead with their camping-out plans. 
It was not until several weeks at Squaw Point 
had passed that Mrs. Parker picked up suffi- 
cient information about the Hern gang to make 
her dread to see the sun go down. 

The Hern gang? Oh, they were not a bad 
crowd, except when drunk. There were two 
Hern brothers and one or two toughs that ran 
with the Herns. They were all right except 
when drunk, but they had an unfortunate dis- 
position to get drunk whenever they could get 
whisky. One of the Herns was a jailbird, hav- 
ing served a term for attempting to carve up 
his brother with a long knife and partly suc- 
ceeding. These amiable creatures, the Herns 
and associated toughs, were, however, all right 
when not drunk ; it was embarrassing to women 
and children not to know when they were about 
to get drunk, so the women and children might 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 185 
flee to a fortified place. After Mrs. Parker 
heard of the Herns she saw to it that the porch 
shades were all down and the screen door 
hooked tight every night, not very substantial 
protection, but there was a man about the house 
— Paul. 

One Sunday, late in the afternoon, when Mrs. 
Parker and Dorothy and the children and some 
friends from another cottage were on the 
beach, a commotion was heard up the road. It 
was the Hern gang, and Mr. Parker was away ! 
Their team came along, loosely guided by a 
drunken Hern. Two companions, leering and 
bawling, were also in the wagon, though not 
free from liability to pitch out at any 
time. 

“Oh, that's the Hern gang," said one of the 
women, a visiting cottager from up the 
lake. 

“Where are they going!" asked Mrs. Parker. 

“They can't get home this way," replied the 
speaker. “They will be back pretty soon 
probably." 


186 SQUAW POINT 

Paul explained that the road ended at Squaw 
Point. There was only a footpath across from 
the road the Herns were taking to the road that 
would take them home. They would either 
have to leave the team and go across on foot 
or come back with the team, passing again in 
front of the Parker cottage, and it was growing 
late. The Herns had not stopped at the cot- 
tage going down, but they might coming back; 
it was their habit to go to houses and demand 
something to eat, or call for matches, while the 
women would flee. 

The Herns disappeared down the road yell- 
ing and cursing. They drove in at Uncle Erick- 
son’s, but finding no one at home, came out 
and went farther along, passing out of sight 
behind the second growth of timber that grew 
beside the road. When out of sight their bawl- 
ing could be heard. The observers on the 
Parker beach could imagine the Herns reeling 
to the doors of houses farther along the road, 
calling for coffee and frightening people. 

The little party in front of the Parker cottage 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 187 
strained their eyes and«ears to detect the return 
of the Herns. But they did not come into view. 
The two women, who had walked to the 
Parkers ’, dared not set out on foot while there 
was uncertainty as to where the Herns would 
he, so they borrowed a boat from the Parker 
beach and as darkness fell pulled away, keeping 
rather close to shore, for the lake was rough, 
and keeping rather far out, for safety from 
the Herns. Mrs. Parker and Dorothy looked 
with a sickening sense of helplessness upon the 
boat as it pulled away and then they watched 
for the Herns to come back. It was growing 
so late that the Parkers thought the gang must 
have left the team and gone across to the other 
road on foot, and they began to breathe easier. 
Their relief was short-lived; the Herns were 
coming. The team was coming, so the Herns 
would soon be gone. But there was only one 
man in the wagon. Where were the others! 
The Parkers watched, from within the cottage, 
the lone Hern drive by, with his ugly face and 
greasy hat. Maybe the other two had taken 


188 SQUAW POINT 

the footpath between the roads and gone home 
— maybe. Mrs. Parker declared the wagon had 
stopped in the woods not far below the cottage. 

“Probably the other two were so drunk they 
fell out of the wagon and this one tried to get 
them back in, but couldn’t/ ’ suggested Dorothy. 

Mrs. Parker’s face grew white. 

“The man in the wagon wouldn’t leave the 
others by the road, would he?” asked Mrs. 
Parker in consternation. 

“Wouldn’t he?” said Paul. “How could he 
do anything else? They fell out, and he was 
too drunk to get them back into the wagon.” 

Instead of being happy because of the Herns 
leaving, the Parkers now feared there were two 
of them lurking near and might be around all 
night, — not a pleasant foreboding. But no one 
knew just what had become of the two who 
were missing. It was just a theory that the 
drunks were within a short distance of the cot- 
tage, with darkness coming on and not a neigh- 
bor within a half mile. There was a chance that 
they had gone home across fields on foot, per- 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 189 
haps after quarreling with the man who drove 
the wagon. 

The Parkers were going to bed as usual — not 
quite as usual either, for there was a horrible 
dread. Paul’s little sister wished to know if 
bullets would go through the screens and 
through porch shades and through khaki, there 
being a hammock of that material. No lights 
were used, and there was a silence about the 
cottage that was depressing. The older Parkers 
did not go to bed until late and had just lain 
down when there came a knock at the screen 
door. Mrs. Parker, at first frightened, some- 
how felt that it was Mr. Erickson and so it 
was. Uncle Erickson stepped upon the porch 
and said he thought he ought to tell them that 
there were two drunks, one of them the Hern 
jailbird, lying right by the road about seventy 
yards below the Parker cottage. 

“I was coming home just now,” explained 
Uncle Erickson, “and my wagon wheel passed 
within six inches of something by the road and 
my horse jumped. I thought it might be some- 


190 SQUAW POINT 

body, so I drove down to my place and put up 
my horse and left my wife and came back to 
see. It’s the Herns, two of them, drunk as 
lords; but they’ll come to before morning. 
When I came along with my lantern, one of 
them, the jailbird, riz up a little and clutched 
me and reached for his hip pocket to get a gun, 
I guess. I smashed his arms down and he went 
to sleep again. But they’ll come to and be 
going by before morning.” 

“Oh, Mr. Erickson, won’t you stay here till 
morning? Protect us.” 

“Wisht I could,” said Uncle Erickson. 
“But my old woman is scared to death and I 
can’t leave her. She’s sure afraid of the 
Herns.” 

“But there’s Ben. Ben would protect Mrs. 
Erickson.” 

“Ben’s away from home,” said Uncle 
Erickson. 

“Well, I must be going,” continued Uncle 
Erickson. “I’m going back next to the water 
and let the Herns have the road. I just wanted 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 191 
to let you know, Mrs. Parker; thought you 
might be interested. ,, 

“ Can’t you do something for us?” beseeched 
Mrs. Parker, terrified beyond measure. 

“If I only had some ammunition for my 
gun,” replied Uncle Erickson. “I wisht I had 
some cartridges, but I shot ’em all up last 
winter. They cost like sin now, five cents every 
time you pull the trigger. Don’t have a car- 
tridge left. My rifle is sure death and if I had 
some ammunition you could borrow gun and 
all and make a sieve of any Hern that showed 
up. They don’t carry anything to compare 
with that rifle of mine; it’s a bird. But I don’t 
have a pinch of ammunition. Some of them 
pistols will get into action a little sooner than 
a rifle but give me a rifle. Of course, if they 
sneak along and feeling ugly-like put a few 
bullets through the cottage just by way of con- 
versation there ain’t much left for you to do 
except dodge.” 

“Oh, they wouldn’t do that,” said Mrs. 
Parker, desperate. 


192 SQUAW POINT 

1 1 Well, probably not,” replied Uncle Erick- 
son. ‘ 1 It’s more likely that they’d wake up cold 
and wet in this heavy dew and fog and think 
first of getting some coffee. Then they might 
come here, this being the first house they’d 
pass, going home by the road, and call for 
you to get up and make some hot coffee. You’d 
better make ’em the coffee. They’re all right 
except when they’re drunk or just getting over 
it; then they’re the devil’s own. The boot- 
leggers that sell them liquor ought to be sent 
over the road for a term of years. I don’t 
have any respect for a man that makes his 
money by bringing booze into dry territory, and 
there’s lots of ’em doing it.” 

And Uncle Erickson disappeared in the night. 

Mrs. Parker took hold of Paul to keep from 
collapsing on the floor. “The children, the chil- 
dren,” she moaned. 

Paul tried to say something. 

“We must get away from here, now, now, 
now, before they wake up,” said Mrs. Parker 
to Paul, speaking a few words and then panting 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 193 
and speaking some more. “Get out the car 
and take us all to town, quick, before they wake 
up, Paul. ,, 

She sank upon the hammock and could barely 
hold up under the shock of Uncle Erickson’s 
report. She looked at Paul, and Paul, who had 
not yet really said anything at all, looked at his 
mother. 

Finally Paul spoke. 

“We live here,” he said. 

“What do you mean?” his mother asked. 

‘ ‘ 1 mean we are not going to run, ’ ’ answered 
Paul. “We live here and we’re going to stay, 

by ” and here Paul used an expression that 

his mother forgave. 

“We must go to town and go to a hotel for 
the night,” Mrs. Parker urged. 

“Do you want me to be a coward?” asked 
Paul. 

“We’ll stay, but oh, Paul,” was his mother’s 
half-spoken and half-shuddered reply. 

Mrs. Parker made up her mind to put the 
two little children under the cots in case the 


194 SQUAW POINT 

Herns came; she would pull down the mat- 
tresses to protect them in case bullets should 
fly. The only cot in range of the one screen 
door was Paul’s. Paul and Mr. Parker had 
always had their cots behind a hammock that 
hung across the porch midway back from the 
door. The rest of the family slept around the 
corner of the porch. 

Paul and Mrs. Parker moved about noise- 
lessly, following the example of Uncle Erick- 
son, who had talked in low tones and stolen 
away quietly after having indicated by pointing 
his finger and jerking his head the exact place 
in the bushes where the two men were lying. 
No unnecessary sounds were made as Paul 
moved the porch seat across the doorway and 
placed upon the seat the wood box filled with 
firewood gathered from the woods, which were 
now a solid mass of terrors. He thought that 
by placing the filled wood box on the porch seat 
any one breaking through the screen door 
would topple the wood off the seat and perhaps 
fall into it and likewise collide with the porch 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 195 
seat and get mixed up generally. This would 
wake up every one and give Paul a chance to 
get in his work of defense, using the auto spade. 

The spade was a short implement of heavy 
high-grade steel with a detachable handle, 
capable of splicing the top of a man’s head off 
if wielded with sufficient power. Paul took 
hold of the spade and ‘ 4 hefted” it and made 
motions with it as if laying out a Hern. He 
was undecided whether to use the cutting edge 
of the side of the blade and slice off the top of a 
Hern’s head, or strike with the back of the blade 
and stun the man or possibly cave in his skull 
without drawing blood. Mrs. Parker saw Paul 
practising the movements with the spade and 
while not an expert in mechanics knew some 
things by intuition. 

“You couldn’t do anything with the spade, 
Paul,” she said. “They would knock it out of 
your hands the first thing. You are not strong 
enough. ’ ’ 

“He’d be sprawled out on the wood,” argued 
Paul. “He’d fall over the wood and make a 


196 SQUAW POINT 

racket, and Pd rush out with the spade and 
smash at him. I could cave his skull in with 
this spade. Or maybe he’ll come up with his 
face to the porch screening; then I’ll swing 
sideways with the blade; it would cut right 
through the screen and slice his face off.” 

4 ‘Don’t you try to use the spade,” his mother 
begged. “There are two of them and you are 
a mere boy.” 

“But Father said I was to be the man of the 
house,” replied Paul, with set face, still feeling 
the weight of the spade and getting the swing 
of it. 

“Take the revolver and shoot,” Mrs. Parker 
demanded. “You have a right to keep any one 
from breaking in ; they might frighten the chil- 
dren to death or do some awful thing. Take 
the revolver and if they come shoot, shoot.” 

“I’d like to try the spade on one of them,” 
argued Paul. “If I could get a good swing 
with the spade I believe I could do one up.” 

“Don’t trust the spade at all,” said Mrs. 
Parker. “Have the spade nearby if you will, 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 197 
but take your father’s revolver and shoot if 
you have to, but don’t get hurt yourself. 
Here,” exclaimed Mrs. Parker suddenly, “you 
go back with the children, and give me the re- 
volver. I’m afraid you will be hurt.” 

“I’ll keep the revolver,” said Paul, “and 
use it.” 

Mrs. Parker went back to her cot, and Paul 
set the spade beside his cot, leaning the spade 
handle against the wooden rod at his head. 
The revolver, a heavy weapon that would stop 
a bull, he laid on the floor about three feet 
from the side of the cot, so that when he turned 
to get up his right hand would come down on 
the spot where it lay. He planned to get out 
of bed by rolling over, thus keeping his body 
below the khaki hammock, upon which he had 
placed pillows on a line with his head when in 
a sleeping position. Paul made up his mind to 
keep quiet until an attempt was made at the 
screen door. Then he would roll out and keep- 
ing his body out of sight so as not to afford 
a target, fire from behind the end of the ham- 


198 SQUAW POINT 

mock. There would be no light on the porch 
and he would be able to shoot with greater 
accuracy than would a man just getting over 
a drunk who came to a cottage without knowing 
its arrangements or where the family was 
sleeping. Paul practised pointing the revolver 
after Mrs. Parker had retired, but not to sleep, 
and felt sure that he could make the first shot 
effective should a man come to the screen door. 
For the second shot he would slide across the 
space between the end of the hammock and the 
porch side. If they returned his fire they would 
shoot at where his shot had been fired from, and 
in the meantime, before the flash got out of 
their eyes, he would have slid across the open 
space and raked the doorway with some more 
balls. He had six shots in the revolver and 
more cartridges in the pocket of his night- 
shirt. Having been drunk they would not shoot 
straight and they would not know where to 
shoot, and probably his own first shot would 
make them skip out. Suppose they did hit him ; 
they might not kill him and a wound would heal 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 199 
up. Besides, he would rather be shot and killed 
and laid out in a coffin and have flowers, with 
his mother crying, and have Ben Long come 
along and look at the dead face and say to him- 
self that Paul had grit, than to sneak the family 
away from the cottage in a car, away from two 
drunken low-brows, who this moment were — 
maybe — just getting their evil minds awake and 
plotting to shoot up the cottage that that smart 
city guy, Parker, had built at Squaw Point, 
where they had slept off so many drunks and 
got hot coffee afterwards from people who did 
not dare refuse it. Ben Long wouldn’t run, 
thought Paul ; he ’d stay and take his medicine ; 
Ben had philosophy. They may hit me, thought 
Paul, but then I may hit them. Let them be 
afraid of him. 

Paul tried to sleep but he heard many sounds. 
The prepared roofing would snap or do some- 
thing, on account of changing temperature, and 
Paul would be on pins and needles. He lay as 
if the cot did not support him, his own tense 
muscles refusing to let go. Every little while 


200 SQUAW POINT 

there would be a sound and Paul would start. 
Then he would partly fall asleep only to find 
himself jerked into full consciousness by a 
sound. Once there was a noise that brought 
a whisper from across the cots. Mrs. Parker 
was sure some one was at the door. Paul stage- 
whispered that it was nothing. Then he as- 
sured himself it was only the scratching of a 
pine twig against the screen as the wind began 
to move the trees gently. The night had been 
still and foggy and it was a relief to have the 
wind come after such stillness. The light of 
dawn began to steal among the trees, and no 
visitors yet. Paul went to sleep for longer 
periods, but would wake from a dream and then 
think Herns and feel for the revolver and drop 
off to sleep again. 

Mrs. Parker did not sleep, not to speak of. 
She was afraid for Paul, and then the two little 
children, one a baby. It was due to her sleep- 
lessness and fear that the family felt that a 
long breath was allowable when day came. She 
had seen two shadows on the screen as day 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 201 
dawned, shadows which she took to be those of 
the two men stealing away quietly. This ex- 
planation was a comfort; to be sure, the sun 
rose on the other side of the cottage and could 
not have cast a shadow on the screen of an 
object on the west side of the cottage, and 
there was no moon, certainly none so powerful 
as to cast shadows that would prevail against 
the rising sun, but it was a comfort to the 
family to have the explanation, which served as 
an early morning stimulant until Paul went 
near where the men had been and discovered 
no one was there, finding the places in the grass 
and earth where the drunks had lain like logs. 
But the men were gone and never did the sun 
and day seem more welcome and wholesome. 
The mist that the sun caused to vanish in the 
bay this side of Squaw Point was something 
which the fear mist on the porch resembled in 
dispersion. What relief to know the men were 
gone! 

Yet Paul did not feel quite like the others. 
As the night drew on and he had been startled 


202 SQUAW POINT 

into expectancy of a conflict and no one came, 
he began to realize a strange revolution in his 
feelings. At first he had not exactly desired to 
have the Herns attack the cottage, not exactly. 
But as the night passed and no Hern showed 
up, Paul began to feel differently. The spade 
was ready and he had pointed the revolver and 
pictured the slaughter so many times before 
daybreak that he suddenly became aware that 
what was troubling him was disappointment. 
He was disappointed because they had not 
come ! He was amazed at himself, but that was 
the way he felt. He knew his mother would 
not understand it, but he was disappointed. 

But the Hern gang was still at large, and 
Paul slept in the end cot and kept the spade 
leaning on the wooden rod at his head and laid 
the big revolver three feet from the side of the 
cot night after night while Mr. Parker was 
away. The Herns came not but the fear of 
them remained. Paul’s little sister feared they 
would come again but took heart from the spade 
and revolver; she believed Paul meant to kill 


THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 203 
them with the revolver and bury them with the 
spade, and her little heart was comforted. 

When Mr. Parker came back Mrs. Parker 
took him aside and she may have told him about 
Paul, for when she and Mr. Parker came near 
where Paul was they seemed to be gazing his 
way mostly and Mr. Parker had a look in his 
eyes. He put his hand on PauPs head and said 
that a boy had become a man, he guessed, and 
when Ben Long heard about the way Paul 
stood up when the Herns came, he told Paul 
that that was just what he, Ben, had expected. 

“But I was scared to death and the Herns 
did not attack the cottage/ ’ expostulated Paul. 
“I didn’t do a thing.” 

“Yes, you did,” asserted Ben. “You made 
up your mind and that’s what counts.” But 
then Ben had philosophy, only he would not 
have known it by that name. 

And the best news the Parkers had was when 
they learned that the deputy sheriff had 
“pinched” the jailbird Hern, who would go 
to the penitentiary for another offense, and 


204 SQUAW POINT 

that the bootleggers, whom Uncle Erickson so 

much despised, were being dealt with under the 

law. 

“I wouldn’t have the revolver by the cot,” 
Mrs. Parker said to Paul, late in the season; 
“somebody might step on it and make it go* 
off.” 


“Just as you say,” said Paul. 


XI 


THE COONS 

When Ben and Paul were on a berry-picking 
trip they came across an old basswood tree that 
had been felled. Ben said “ coons.’ ’ 

“How did they catch them?” asked Paul. 

“Plugged the hole at the top of the tree and 
then chopped down the basswood and caught 
them when they came out. They live in hollow 
trees,” explained Ben. “Ever see coons?” 

Paul said he had never seen a coon in all his 
life. 

“Maybe you never saw a coyote,” asked 
Ben. “There are quite a few of them, wolves 
we call them, around in these woods in the 
winter. If there’s a dead horse or animal the 
coyotes will come for a meal and you can set 
traps and get them that way. But dogs get 
into the traps too. We have had two or three 


205 


206 SQUAW POINT 

dogs crippled up by being caught in wolf traps 
in the winter and frozen. We had to shoot the 
dogs. Swede, our dog now, is foxy and keeps 
away from the traps; anyhow he’s never got 
caught yet. Maybe it’s just his good luck.” 

“Who’s got the coons?” asked Paul. 

“They’re up at Old Man Westby’s now,” 
replied Ben. “Two old ones and three young 
ones.” 

So the boys visited Old Man Westby to see 
the coons. 

“I had to get them or be eaten out of house 
and home,” explained Westby. “They found 
my sweet corn and the way they consumed it 
was a shame; paid no attention to food regu- 
lations or rules for substitutes. They seemed 
to be working against the Allies and so we or- 
ganized and went and took them.” 

“How did you know where to find them?” 
asked Paul. 

4 4 The dog, ’ ’ said Westby. ‘ 4 He spotted them. 
Smelled them out, and when he saw the little 
fellows we knew the old coons were not far 


THE COONS 207 

away. When we were sure they were all at 
home we plugged the tree and cut it down and 
nabbed them as they came out at the base. I’ve 
captured any number of coons for the skins; 
have a coonskin coat that I wouldn’t part with, 
warmest kind of a coat.” 

“I should think you would keep these for 
pets,” said Paul. 

* 1 They are comical,” said Westby. “ Funny 
as the dickens. Here, General,” said Westby, 
and pulled out the father coon by the chain, 
“stand up and let us look at you.” 

Westby had one of the children bring a dish 
of milk, which was put in the inclosure where 
mother coon and the three little ones were con- 
fined. The little coons, with their bright eyes 
and sharp noses, which looked as if they had 
been given a coat of liquid shoe blacking, for 
brightness and color, rushed up and began to 
take milk from the pan. Mother coon, however, 
seemed to think the youngsters should wait for 
the second table and she cuffed them away un- 
mercifully and ate the milk herself, which she 


208 SQUAW POINT 

did by reaching in a paw with the toes spread 
out and bringing it back to her mouth with the 
toes held together. Then she licked or drank 
from the inner surface of her paw and re- 
peated the operation with speed and earnest- 
ness. The little ones were treated less severely 
later but at no time was there anything like 
politeness. 

“Are they good to eat?” inquired Paul. 

“Yes, but it’s like eating one of your own 
family,” said Westby. 

“Never ’ll forget the times we used to have 
chasing coons the year Neff the lawyer had a 
tent pitched out here by the lake. He was a 
sure-enough sportsman. He liked the Point. 
The first time I ever saw him he was in a boat 
off the Point fishing. I was fishing too. He 
said, ‘Do you live here?’ I said no, that I 
lived on the land. He said that was what he 
meant to ask. He put up a tent and we were 
the best of friends.” 

“Where is he now?” inquired Ben. 

“Oh, gone away, out west in North Dakota, 


THE COONS 209 

but he’s coming back. One time when he was 
away from his tent somebody broke into it and 
took a few things. He found some of his fish- 
ing tackle on the beach and his sweater was 
tied to a tree. It was boys that did it. When 
he came back he wanted me to take my gun 
and shoot at anybody who molested his tent in 
his absence. ‘Do you think this is a battle 
front V I asked him. I told him shooting was 
pretty serious business. I asked him if he 
wanted me to spend the rest of my days behind 
prison bars. Everybody knows there ’s not 
much of value in a tent or summer cottage, and 
it would scarcely be worth while to kill a per- 
son to keep him out. It would be mostly boys 
who would try to get into a summer residence 
or put soap suds in the pump, and why kill for 
such a trifling act?” 

“Would you shoot a man for stealing ?” 
asked Ben. 

“Yes and no,” replied Old Man Westby. 
“It would depend on what he was stealing and 
the general circumstances. If he was stealing 


210 SQUAW POINT 

something that would deprive my family of 
necessary things and cause them to starve or 
freeze to death I believe I would be justified 
in shooting. But if a thief was making a raid 
on a hen roost I might shoot but I would aim 
high.” 

“Things are safe down here, aren’t they?” 
asked Paul. “We are going to leave cots and 
things at the cottage.” 

“Nobody’s going to steal the cottage,” re- 
plied Westby reassuringly. “That’s too large 
to be concealed about one’s person. How far 
is your pump in the ground?” 

Paul said they drove the pipe down twelve 
feet. 

“They won’t take that either,” continued 
Westby. “But as for other things I could 
not say. They might or they might not. 
There ’s lawless characters in every community, 
folks that would do things if they had a 
chance, but the snow will get so deep around 
your cottage that you need have little fear. I’d 
be more afraid that schoolboys would be going 


THE COONS 211 

by and would try to be smart, but the boys 
of this neighborhood are good boys, tiptop 
boys. 

“You asked me if I ever had anything 
taken. Yes, I have. Some years ago a thief 
got into my log granary and took grain in the 
fall of the year. He took from several farmers 
in this neighborhood the same night. I heard 
our dog growl but thought nothing of it. The 
next morning the neighbors began to stir and 
they asked me if I had had anything stolen. 
‘No,’ said I. Then I began to look around and 
I discovered that a thief had come. My log 
granary door had been forced open and grain 
had been taken, together with sacks. And it 
was my sacks that convicted the thief. We 
tracked that thief by the grain that spilled out 
of his rig and by the print of his horse’s hoofs 
in the earth. We had him arrested and brought 
into court. We took from him sacks, which he 
had cut the owners’ names out of. But some 
of the sacks had been mended by patches and 
could be identified. My wife swore that she had 


212 SQUAW POINT 

put the patches on certain sacks and they could 
not shake her testimony. So they sent the thief 
to jail and we recovered most of the stolen 
property.’ ’ 

“How did she know she put on the patches ?” 
inquired Ben, who, it must be said, often suf- 
fered long from lack of needle and thread. 

‘ ‘ That she knew,” explained Westby, “by the 
kind of stitches used. I don’t just know the 
peculiarities of the sewing but my wife never 
wavered. She put the patches on and she knew 
she had. The prisoner saw it was all up with 
him when she left the witness stand.” 

“I suppose you fixed up the granary so 
nobody could get in next time, ’ ’ suggested Paul. 

“It was all right as it was,” contended 
Westby, “the granary itself; it was just the 
failure to provide a suitable lock for the door. 
The one that was on the door was a mere make- 
shift. The granary itself is a work of art. It 
was built by men from the old country at a 
dollar a round. It was built by Finlanders out 
of pine logs. The logs are dove-tailed at the 


THE COONS 213 

joints and so fitted together that not a kernel 
of grain can escape. It was built two stories 
and a half high and not a brace used in the 
entire construction. Right there it stands,” 
said Westby, pointing; “it’s getting old now 
but it’s a valuable building to-day.” 

“Wouldn’t some other kind of logs do just 
as well as pine!” asked* Ben. 

“Pine or begilyan,” answered Westby. 
“These don’t check.” 

“I suppose you will live here always,” said 
Ben. 

“No man can tell where he will spend the 
rest of his days,” said Westby. “It is just 
the same with a man of my years as it is with 
you two boys. You have a longer period ahead 
of you, although you never can be sure, but 
there is uncertainty in either case. I expect to 
live right here under Squaw Point for quite a 
spell yet, if these summer people don’t buy me 
out, which I hope I can resist. They come after 
me, from Dakota and Chicago, to buy me out.” 

“Wouldn’t you sell!” asked Paul. 


214 SQUAW POINT 

“For my price,” said Westby, tapping the 
ground with his cane and looking far away. 
“There’s no better place to live. The air is 
such that one wakes refreshed from slumber, 
no malaria. The little lake belongs to this 
property and can be drained. All that is neces- 
sary to drain it is to deepen the Kiel Canal,” 
mentioned with humor, “which flows from the 
little lake into the big lake. Lower the bed of 
that stream and the small lake would dry up 
and the land that’s left would be valuable. I 
am not undertaking any of these improvements 
myself, but they will be made in time ; if not in 
my time, later.” 

“You must have seen many things down here 
where you have lived so long,” suggested Paul. 

“It’s been good times and poor times,” said 
Westby. “I’ve seen many things in my day. 
The big fire swept through here and burned 
everything. Most of the trees you see are 
scarred on one side. The fire raged for days 
and we fled to high ground or where the flames 
could not reach us. The fires burned the very 


THE COONS 215 

soil and smoldered for weeks. We cut trenches 
in the earth to stop their spread. The wild ani- 
mals came out of the forest but showed no fear. 
A friend of mine told me how when he was 
getting away from the front a big black bear 
came rolling along by his side with his mouth 
open and his tongue hanging out, but he did 
not attack; he was too much taken up with his 
own troubles to look for a fight. Scores of 
people farther east lost their lives and the 
smoke poured over the country from the path 
of the fires. But you should have seen the 
corn crop the next season. In places it grew 
twenty feet high, such corn as was never seen 
before or since.” 

“ There have been good times and poor 
times/ * repeated Paul. 

“Good times and poor times/ ’ replied Old 
Man Westby, throwing an ear of sweet corn to 
the old father coon, who took it in his paws 
as if they were hands. “We got caught one 
winter without feed for the stock. Straw there 
was none and the hay was gone. I went out 


216 SQUAW POINT 

on the ice on the big lake and cut some reeds 
for bedding the stock. I saw the cattle eat this, 
so I went out with a mower and wheel rake 
and began to cut the reeds and wild rice that 
grew in the lake and stood above the ice. Other 
people were in the same fix that I was and they 
came with mowing-machines and wheel rakes 
and hay rigs. I counted twenty-one teams on 
the ice at one time, getting hay, you might call 
it. The reeds are sweetish inside and the cows 
ate them and the wild rice makes pretty good 
hay. The ducks like it. You can see them 
come along and strip a head of wild rice with 
their bills. They will give one motion with 
their bills and sweep out the kernels from a 
head. Cold? We went after hay on the ice 
when it was forty below. We would hang a 
horse blanket inside of the hayrack at the rear 
end of the sleigh when we were facing the wind, 
to keep from freezing, and we would walk 
behind.” 

“The lake must be a pretty cold place in the 
winter time,” said Paul. 


THE COONS 


217 

“The wind sweeps it,” said Westby, “and 
the snow blizzards are something fierce. But 
I made a valuable acquaintance, if I can say I 
am really acquainted with him yet, out on the 
ice.” 

“Who was that?” asked Ben, who thought 
he knew everybody around Squaw Point. 

“The Hermit,” said Westby. “I met the 
Hermit at a little skating party on the ice. 
That was before he came to live here. The 
accident hadn’t happened to his wife then, or 
maybe it had. But the Hermit, boys, the Her- 
mit, has the stuff when it comes to nerve. Make 
no mistake about that. That’s why I like the 
Hermit — I know him. He has his own ideas 
and lives the way he thinks best. He’s full of 
learning, the Hermit. I shouldn’t be surprised 
to find out that he had been on Squaw Point 
getting facts together about the heavens for 
the government, with that telescope he’s so 
fond of. He has his own ideas and keeps a lot 
of them to himself.” 

“You met him on the ice?” this from Paul. 


218 SQUAW POINT 

“He was younger, though it was not so many 
years ago, and I was a good deal of a fool. 
If I hadn’t been I never would have ventured 
out with a sled in such poor repair. I had a 
one-horse cutter with a broken runner. This 
I had tied up with a heavy cord, but the cord 
was placed beneath the runner and took the 
wear. I was in town and expected to have a 
smith fix the runner, but I got into conversa- 
tion and neglected the matter until it was past 
time. I might have had sense enough to run 
the cord in a new place, but I hadn’t. So I set 
out for home across the ice. It was getting 
dark but there would be a moon later. I had 
never thought of danger and had no gun. I 
knew there were wolves too, not merely these 
little coyotes, but the regular old timber wolves. 
They had not been cleared out of the big swamp 
at that time. The winter had been severe and 
they got pretty hungry, and I figure that they 
had had a taste of blood that day and were 
looking for more. Anyhow, when I got out on 
the ice I began to hear the critters. You hear 


THE COONS 219 

them once and you will remember their noise. 
I spoke to the horse and she moved along a 
little faster. Just then it occurred to me that 
my runner was not in good condition. If I 
could keep going the wolves probably would 
not get to me until I was so near Squaw Point 
that I could get in without harm, but if the 
runner should give me trouble they might 
come too close for comfort. So I studied on 
the runner. I knew what would happen if the 
string wore through and I shouldn’t get out 
and fix it. The rear portion of the runner 
would swing around sideways and catch in the 
snow and maybe tip me out if we came to an 
obstruction. Most of the lake was free from 
snow, but on the side farthest from town there 
was much snow and it was here that I would 
need to move along pretty spry if anywhere. 

“Well, I was riding along, as a man will, 
thinking more about what the runner was 
liable to do than about where the wolves were 
when, Jerusalem! they yelled so near they sur- 
prised me. I wasn’t halfway across the ice 


220 SQUAW POINT 

yet and I could feel that the runner was out 
of place and beginning to drag and catch. 1 
better fix the runner the first thing, I thought 
to myself, and jumped out to do a quick job. 
I dropped the reins when I jumped out and was 
kicking the broken runner into place when the 
wolves yelled again, closer up. This scared the 
mare so she must have jumped ten feet, and she 
kept going. I ran after her and called to her 
to stop, but she must have thought it was more 
wolves and she lit out. There I was with a 
stretch of ice between me and the shore toward 
town on one side and more ice and snow banks 
and a runaway horse and Squaw Point on the 
other side. You will excuse me if I was unde- 
cided. The wolves were swinging along on the 
ice back of me and Squaw Point looked good to 
me, but so far away. My state of mind was 
not relieved much when the brutes let out 
another howl in concert that seemed to express 
considerable satisfaction. I had a pocket knife 
and I turned toward Squaw Point. I would be 
offering them a square meal if I took the back 



“I Heard a Shot" 





THE COONS 221 

track, while I might, if I ran fast enough, get 
to the home side. I threw my buffalo coat 
away, as far as I could heave it on the ice, 
thinking to distract their attention and get a 
minute extra. Then I began to imitate the hay 
mare in making tracks for this side of the lake. 

“I heard a shot and was heartsick that any- 
body should be wasting ammunition when I 
needed it so much. I was going as fast as a 
man can on ice ; if you hurry too much you lose 
out. If I could get to where there was more 
snow on the ice my feet would not slip so much 
and I might get away from the wolves and by 
this time I could hear their toenails scratch on 
the ice, or I thought I could. Then I heard 
another shot and the thought came into my 
head that it might be somebody shooting at the 
wolves. I don’t know why I didn’t have sense 
enough to think of that the first shot. I was 
thinking of Squaw Point, I guess. I looked 
back, and, suffering snakes! there was a man 
on skates wading right into the wolves and 
skating circles around them and handing out 


222 SQUAW POINT 

lead. The nerve of it! I stopped on the ice 
right where I was and could see enough of 
what was going on to convince me that my wife 
would see me again. The man on skates didn’t 
do a thing to that pack. I asked him after- 
wards if he got every shot. He said that if he 
missed any he wasn’t aware of it. There was 
blood on the snow where the survivors made 
their getaway and there were five dead ones, 
which would account for six shots. But what 
struck me was the way he seemed to enjoy the 
row. He didn’t know I was within forty miles 
of the place. I could not flatter myself that 
he was trying to save me, for he wasn’t. The 
man was a good skater — you ought to see the 
Hermit skate, just the way he came home with 
dinnymite — and he had come out for a scrap 
with timber wolves!” 

“The Hermit do that!” asked Ben with his 
eyes wide open. “I never heard of that; he 
never told us.” 

“And he wouldn’t in a thousand years, and 
he most likely wouldn’t like to have me tell it, 


THE COONS 223 

and I don’t talk about him often. He’s the 
Hermit to us and that’s enough,” and Old Man 
Westby threw another ear of sweet corn to the 
old coon and looked at the boys with a steady 
look that seemed to go back and back over his 
lifetime. 


xn 


PARTRIDGES 

As the fall days drew near with their tang and 
color, Ben and Paul spent many hours ranging 
the shores of the lake and going about in the 
woods that clothed the crest and slopes of 
Squaw Point. The boys would frequently run 
upon partridges and be startled as these 
whirred away among the bushes, sometimes 
one by one, until all had escaped. The hunting 
season would open soon, but the boys were not 
so much interested in shooting as in seeing 
things. Paul thought he would like to eat par- 
tridge sometime; Ben told him the meat was 
white and not like the dark meat of the prairie 
chicken, about which Paul knew. Ben said that 
partridges were like prairie chickens on the 
outside, but on the inside were more like 
regular chickens, such as stood around the 
pump for water in Uncle Erickson’s dooryard. 


224 


PARTRIDGES 225 

The paths that led through the woods were 
never more alluring. The carpet of brown 
pine needles, the gorgeous red of the sumac, 
the waning and yellowing foliage of the bushes 
and shrubs that had stood all summer over- 
shadowed by trees, the crisp and almost frosty 
mornings, the lake, blue and placid or gray and 
riotous with foam, the sound of the threshing 
machines on nearby farms, the first arrivals of 
ducks on their way southward, and the water 
of the bays and near shore over which hovered 
wraiths of mist to be dispelled when the laggard 
sun reached unlighted places, — all this cast a 
spell upon the two boys. 

One morning they were going over the Point 
when they heard singing. The air was so still 
one might hear sound a long way off. It was 
a man’s voice, not over-loud but beautiful, and 
there was something about it that made one 
think the singer must have known the best music. 

“That’s the Hermit,” said Ben. “He’s a 
great one to sing, sometimes. He doesn’t sing 
like any one else I ever heard.” 


226 SQUAW POINT 

“Sounds like a man, a tenor, I heard once 
when I went to church with my uncle in Chi- 
cago,” said Paul. “He came out and sang a 
solo in church. Say, he could sing.” 

“The Hermit’s sung somewhere, maybe it 
was Chicago,” said Ben. “They say he used 
to sing in public. I guess he could.” 

The Hermit stood in an open space among 
the trees, where the wild roses had starred the 
woods with red in June and where now their 
bushes stood with frayed and rusty foliage hut 
glowing with brilliant scarlet hips. In his 
hand he held a branch heavy with splendid hips, 
and he seemed to be singing rather absent- 
mindedly, and so beautifully that the boys stood 
back and just held their mouths open. 

In the time of roses, 

Hope, thou weary heart: 

Spring a balm discloses 
For the keenest smart. 

Though thy grief o ’ercome thee 
Through the winter’s gloom, 

Thou shalt cast it from thee 
When the roses bloom. 


PARTRIDGES 


227 

“If I could sing like that I wouldn’t have 
pigs around,” was Ben’s comment, “and I’d 
live where people could hear me sing.” And 
he relaxed a face that had been set in attention 
and Paul snuffled, for the exquisitely modulated 
voice had moved the boys in a way they little 
understood. 

“Do you want to see something wonderful?” 
asked the Hermit. 

The boys said they did. 

“It isn’t the rose bushes,” continued the 
Hermit. “They are wonderful too, the red 
hips.” 

“They look as if they had been shellacked,” 
thought Ben. 

“The rose hips are as beautiful to me,” said 
the Hermit, “as the roses themselves. The 
roses come in the spring ; the hips are the roses 
of fall — and roses are welcome then. But 
there’s something for you to see.” 

The boys followed the Hermit to a spruce 
tree that stood with the sunlight just beginning 
to light it up. 


228 SQUAW POINT 

‘ ‘ What is it I” asked Paul. 

“ Can’t you see?” said the Hermit. 

“ Spiders’ webs,” said Ben. 

The dew and mist were still upon the spiders’ 
webs which were suspended from the spruce 
branches, making the graceful tree stand veiled 
and shimmering as the light stole through the 
poplars by which it was surrounded. Webs 
large and webs small, spun miraculously on an 
August night, decked the spruce tree to its top. 
The dense foliage of the lower branches of the 
spruce, where the boys and the Hermit could 
see closely every curious thread of the spiders’ 
aerial engineering, was hung so thickly with 
the cloud-like filaments that one might wonder 
where all the spiders came from to weave by 
moonlight such dainty patterns, even to im- 
prison the moonlight, one might say, for the 
spruce tree looked as if it had been filled with 
moonlight which had all gone away except the 
spiders’ webs. 

The Hermit went around the tree gazing, 
gazing. 1 ‘ Beautiful,” he exclaimed. 


PARTRIDGES 229 

When the boys went on again, the Hermit 
was still there, admiring the webs on the 
spruce tree. Ben and Paul found more things 
to admire after they had been with the Hermit 
on a walk, or run across him in the woods, as 
they had that morning. 

Soon after the vision of the spruce tree there 
was packing up at the Parker cottage and Ben 
and Paul saw less of each other. Paul was 
going to enter high school and Ben, well, Ben 
was thinking. He was also going fishing now 
and then and it was on one of his last fishing 
trips, before he should leave to stay with 
another uncle and do chores for his board 
and room while he went to the town school, 
that he wished Paul had not left so soon 
and could have been in the old boat with 
him. 

In the middle of a hazy afternoon Ben had 
taken Uncle Erickson’s boat around the Point 
to where pike had been caught a week before 
by men from town. If they could catch pike in 
that place he could, if the pike had not moved. 


230 SQUAW POINT 

He was baiting his hook with a minnow, one 
of a canfnl which he had taken with a net at 
the mouth of Toad River, when he heard a gun 
go off on the Point. 

“It’s somebody rushing the hunting season,” 
said Ben, talking to himself and standing up 
in the boat with his eyes on the woods. 
“ They ’re after partridges.” 

Ben caught pickerel and bass and a pike or 
two, but the big fish, the enormous fish, which 
he hoped to catch before he went away, did not 
get hooked that day. It was growing late and 
there were signs of a storm and Ben took the 
oars, with a troll line out, and started back 
around the Point for home. 

“I don’t believe big fish will take a hook,” 
Ben was thinking. “You can get them through 
the ice with a spear but they are too wise or 
lazy to bite on a minnow or a frog or pork or 
bacon or artificial bait. I’d just like to get a 
fish sometime that would make people stare, 
oh, say fifty pounds, if they are that size any 


more. 


PARTRIDGES 231 

Ben was hurrying to keep from getting wet 
in the coming rain. The water was rough and 
would be rougher around the Point. 

“What ails that dog?” thought Ben as he 
heard a dog’s sharp barking near the high bluff 
ahead. “It’s the Hermit’s dog,” he decided. 
“He’s treed a coon or got something cornered. 
But he doesn’t sound natural; I wonder 
what’s up.” 

Ben rowed close to the foot of the bluff to 
satisfy his curiosity. If he rowed too close he 
would bump the rocks, for the wind was rising 
and it was always rough around the Point when 
it was rough anywhere on the lake. The dog 
was on the bluff, running about wildly and yelp- 
ing and making a fuss. Ben could not make out 
what ailed the dog. It was a queer place for 
the dog to be ; no woodchuck holes there. The 
dog made more fuss when the boat came along 
and Ben looked up to where the dog was and 
rowed slowly, undecided whether or not to pull 
the boat up on the stones and scout or keep 
going. Intent on the dog Ben got close in with 


232 SQUAW POINT 

the flat-bottomed boat, which would swing about 
like a dishpan anyhow, in rough water, and 
found himself almost upon a man’s form, lying 
partly in the water. 

“He’s dead and I can’t do any good,” gasped 
Ben, who did not relish the company of a dead 
man, especially when it was nearly dark and 
the wind was blowing. “I must get home or 
Uncle will worry.” 

The dog howled from the bluff and the waves 
were splashing the legs of the man, who had 
evidently fallen down the bluff and struck on 
the stones. 

‘ ‘ Maybe he’s the man that was shooting par- 
tridges,” said Ben to himself, and he held the 
boat by the anchor chain and looked more 
closely at the man’s face. 

“Why, it’s the Her — it’s the Hermit!” Ben 
exclaimed, with only the dog to hear. 

Ben was smitten with sorrow and did not 
know what he should do. Maybe the Hermit 
was not quite dead and Ben should go for a 
doctor. But the Hermit looked dead. Ben 


PARTRIDGES 233 

could not bear to leave, with the waves coming 
up and washing over the Hermit, yet what good 
could Ben do there? The black clouds were 
rolling in the west and there were lightning 
flashes and darkness coming, for the days had 
become shorter. Then Ben had an idea. He 
could take the Hermit in the boat and land at 
Old Man Westby’s, which was the nearest 
place. He would not leave the Hermit. Ben 
wished he had the Hermit’s splendid boat, 
which was smooth built and dry inside and 
shone in three coats of spar varnish and had 
a keel and rode the water so gracefully that 
when the Hermit rowed it you watched it out 
of sight. He had only Uncle Erickson’s old 
tub, wet in the bottom and hard to row, but he 
would take the Hermit ’s body ; the Hermit had 
been his friend. 

Ben pulled the boat sideways to the beach. 
Then he ran up the beach to where pine trees 
stood and broke off branches, with which he 
filled the back part of the boat. As he was 
carrying the pine branches he thought of the 


234 SQUAW POINT 

Hermit at the spruce tree, the Hermit, who was 
so strong and strange and beyond understand- 
ing — Ben’s friend, who had encouraged him 
more than anybody else in the world. He would 
have pine boughs in the boat, even if it was as 
dark as a stack of black cats before he reached 
Westby’s landing-place. The Hermit would 
have done as much for him. 

Ben, half terrified and wet to the skin, 
had dragged the boat near and was trying to 
lift the Hermits shoulders when the Her- 
mit opened his eyes. Then the Hermit sat 
up. 

“What are the pine boughs for?” the Her- 
mit asked after he had got his mind to work- 
ing. 

“I was going to row you over to West- 
by’s,” answered Ben. “I thought you were 
dead.” 

“Dead men don’t feel anything,” said the 
Hermit, smiling. 

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” said 
Ben, in some embarrassment. “I wanted the 


PARTRIDGES 


235 


boat to be easy and I remembered you liked 
pines and spruces.” 

“Every man is foolish,” said the Hermit, 
and Ben could not tell what was coming next. 
“Every man is foolish; if not in one way then 
in another. A six-year old boy ought to be 
spanked for being as foolish as I was. This is 
really no place for a man weighing two hun- 
dred pounds to be.” 

The Hermit was sitting with both feet in the 
water and seemed to be amused. 

The Hermit asked Ben if he had heard a shot 
fired that afternoon. Ben recalled hearing the 
shot. It was a hunter, the Hermit said, who 
had wounded a partridge. The Hermit had 
caught sight of the bird, on the bluff, and 
was trying to get his hands on it when 
the footing gave way and the Hermit had 
fallen. 

“They’d fine you for eating a partridge be- 
fore the season opens,” said Ben. 

“I was going to fix it up and make it as good 
as new,” explained the Hermit. 


236 SQUAW POINT 

The Hermit said that the fall did not appear 
to have done him any good and he let Ben row 
the boat to Westby’s. 

The Hermit was all right, but Bill Olson, Old 
Man Westby and Uncle Erickson just happened 
to drop in at the Hermit’s the next evening. 
Bill Olson came pussyfooting through the 
bushes, looking right and left, as if not yet sat- 
isfied with a place to build his cottage next 
summer, and Old Man Westby came along the 
path, stiff and upright with his cane. Uncle 
Erickson was there, his face black with a week’s 
growth of beard, which added at least ten years 
to his age in appearance. 

“We might be using that telescope of yours 
to find out what planet you were making your 
home on now,” remarked Westby, lifting his 
cane and letting it fall. 

“I fell all right,” said the Hermit. “Just 
a little gymnastics.” 

6 i Ought to be railings around the top of these 
bluffs,” suggested Bill Olson. “A person — it 
might be a lady — might easily fall down one of 


PARTRIDGES 


237 


these high places. There ’s no telling what 
might happen.” 

“Might put a fence around wounded par- 
tridges,” proposed Westby, slapping his knees, 
while his cane fell to his bosom. 

“You say you feel all right,” said Uncle 
Erickson. “I wouldn’t be too sure about 
that. You might feel all right for a day 
or two — be going around as usual and drop 
dead.” 

“Say, that boy, Ben Long, did not do so 
bad,” ejaculated Bill Olson. “He was going 
to load you in his boat and pull in.” 

“He’s a tiptop boy,” said Old Man Westby. 
“All the boys around here are tiptop 
boys.” 

But no one knew what Ben was thinking of 
most when he found the Hermit at the foot of 
the bluff. It was what the Hermit once said, 
— “Who knows but Ben Long will be a great 
man?” That was what Ben kept thinking 
about over and over. And that was what 
started him off to study books, and he hoped 


238 SQUAW POINT 

the Hermit would not fall off another bluff until 
there had been time for a boy to show not what 
education will do for a fellow but what a fellow 
will do with education. 





























































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COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE 

FOR BOYS By CHARLES P. BURTON 


THE BOYS OF BOB’S HILL 

Illustrated by George A. Williams. 12mo. $1.35 net. 

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BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS 


MAGIC PICTURES OF THE LONG AGO 
By Anna Curtis Chandler 
With some forty illustrations. $1.30 net 
These stories grew out of Miss Chandler’s popular 
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A book about guns for boys of all ages. The history 
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STANDARD CYCLOPAEDIAS FOR YOUNG OR OLD 


CHAMPLIN’S 

Young Folks’ Cyclopedias 

By JOHN D. CHAMPLIN 

Late Associate Editor of the American Cyclopcedia 

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COMMON THINGS 

New, Enlarged Edition, 850 pp. Profusely Illustrated 

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New, Up-to-Date Edition, 985 pp. Over 375 Illustrations 

44 We know copies of the work to which their young owners turn 
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By John D. Champlin and Arthur Bostwick 
Revised Edition, 784 pp. 900 Illustrations 

44 Should form a part of every juvenile library, whether public Off 
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By Constance D’Arcy Mackay 
A charming collection of children’s plays from the best 
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NEW YORK 


PUBUSHERS 


THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE FOR 
YOUNG FOLKS 

Compiled by Burton E. Stevenson, Editor of 
“The Home Book of Verse ." 

With cover, and illustrations in color and black and white by 
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appreciation of them, against the time when the boy or 
girl, grown into youth and maiden, is ready to swim out 
into the full current of English poetry. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 








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